Ghost of Privet Drive
by AndrewWolfe
Summary: "Fix it" said the Fates. "Fix what? With what tools and skills?" I asked. Being dead was only the first of the obstacles. And then I found myself in an understairs cupboard listening to a little boy quietly sobbing. Oh. Fix THAT. In which a sarcastic old git is dropped into the awful childhood of Harry Potter. SI-ish. Rated M for foul language and canon-level abuse.
1. The accident wasn't my fault

Disclaimer and other thuktunthp: First, I am not J.K. Rowling. Second, this is a grossly self-indulgent story, borne out of long car drives, a long-standing fanfic habit and incompletely-treated mental illness and should be read by no-one, ever. Third, and finally for the nonce, while this is a self-insert I've changed a few modest details of my life for privacy purposes.

* * *

Chapter 1

I was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt about that. Oh, none of the paperwork was signed yet - I hadn't stopped breathing, for one thing - but for all practical purposes I was as dead as a doornail.

We make jokes about lorries and their loads and Final Destination, but the reason that those jokes get made is that, from time to time, drivers make mistakes, equipment fails, and, as the vernacular has it: Shit Happens.

This shit happened on a late autumn evening on the M62, one of the more unpleasant bits of motorway driving England has to offer. I was on my way home from dropping my youngest off for her final year at university, crossing the pennines in driving rain with a hint of sleet, traffic not quite so bad as all that but still requiring attention, when I became the punchline of the joke.

A four-tonner flatbed with a crapload of steel fabrications on it. Me, checking my mirrors for a clear moment to pass it, chuckling about Final Destination. Windscreen awash. Whatever happened, happened with my eyes momentarily off it. Eyes front again and the wipers are back at the start and the view is blurred.

Squoosh goes the wiper. Clear goes the windscreen. Slam goes the brake on instincts honed for the Emergency Stop part of the driving test, lo these thirty years ago. Maybe, if I'd not done that, a couple of hundred kilos of rolled steel joist wouldn't have come through the windscreen and, as it turned out, me.

Discontinuity.

Consciousness returns and I can't breathe. Nothing new, asthmatic since forever and I hadn't helped matters along by smoking all those years. The van's on its side, and I'm pinned like a specimen butterfly to my seat.

Best will in the world, I'm going to receive medical attention in ten minutes or so. By which time all they'll be able to do is certify life extinct at the scene. I've never been a medical professional, but I know 'completely fucked' when I see it. Or, as the case may be, I'm bleeding it all over the upholstery of a rented van.

I give up. My eyes blur with tears - watering with the pain, if you want to insist on manliness on my behalf, I'm past bloody caring - and nobody hears my last, panted words.

"Fuckin' bollocks."

It really doesn't feel like a time for eloquence.

The. End.

-oOo-

Except, fuck my little wooden clogs. It's *not*. The end that is. There's a time of blackness, of nothing, the sensory equivalent of a line of asterisks on a printed page. Then there's a swirl and an odd sense of movement and I'm somewhere.

Doesn't feel like a dream, lacks that sense of unreality. _Looks_ like a dream, all twisted perspective and nothing quite the way it ought to be, a collage of familiarity twisted into a strange setting. Something like a workroom, textile stuff, I had a summer job once, as a student, with the costume department of a theatre company and it's got that same explosion-in-a-fabric-mill air about it. Rolls of fabric and half-finished clothes everywhere, tools and machines rearing out of the debris here and there. One of them looks like a _loom_ of all things.

I say somewhere, but I don't seem to be some _thing_. I'm just a point-of-view, seeing all this stuff and hearing, somewhere, the whirr of sewing machines. No smells, no sense of touch. Not even a sense of my own body.

Probably a good thing, given the condition it was in the last time I was aware of it. As sensations to experience go, bleeding to death on the hard shoulder of the M62 is pretty terrible. Zero stars, would not recommend. So *that* is a sense I still have: humour. Not that my sense of humour is fit for polite company after nearly thirty years of being a dad. I feel a chilly and distant sadness that I'm not going to see them ever again. No stupid nerd jokes, no long hikes over the fells with the kids and the dog, no pride as they come home enthused for what they've learnt, no commiseration over the struggle to get jobs in an economy the tories have been shitting on from a great height all these years.

I'm sure I'd be shedding tears if whatever this is included something to shed tears from: for all that I'm seeing, there aren't any eyes to go with it. A mercy, really, because if any death is going to make you grieve it's your own. So very much of human emotion comes from the glands, after all, and my glands are probably being recorded for evidence by a traffic officer who'll be needing a stiff drink later.

**MOIRAI.**

What?

**MOIRAI.**

This is not being said to me. This is being dropped in my consciousness like a dollop of jam in semolina pudding. Not altogether unpleasant as such, but nothing I'd actually choose for dessert.

**MOIRAI.** My attention - what there is of it, in this loopy and distorted mess of haberdashery - is forcefully yanked into close up on a needle, darning a frayed hole in what looks like tapestry. **MOIRAI.**

Right, time to start thinking. Moira. Greek. Fate, allotted portion, destiny. Moirai the personifications thereof. Been a long time, but I remember that much. I can remember Lachesis and Atropos, what's the other one? No matter. Look again at what's around me, what's in front of me. I realise _I recognise all of it_. Whatever I'm experiencing, it's built from my memories. The haberdashery is a mix of the place I worked, and the mess that resulted from sisters and wives and girlfriends in a sewing and/or knitting project frenzy. (And they get all pissy when you clean a carburettor in the sink… although that was the unlamented ex-wife, and fair dos, I was mostly doing it to be pissy with her. This was in the pre-therapy days when I didn't understand why I was so angry all the time and didn't have constructive - more constructive, at any rate - ways of handling it.)

So. _Why_ am I being shown a collage of -

**MESSAGE. COMMAND. **A flash of Mazarin at Casale, one of the many pictures of the event I've seen. Why _that?_ It was one of the ballsier moves of early modern diplomacy, one I picked up by the way at uni as background to the Peace of Westphalia and subsequent Public International Law, it ended up quite famous at the time, lots of pamphlets and broadsides about it, with suitably dramatic woodcuts. Jules Mazarin, before he was Cardinal of France, rode into the middle of an about-to-be battlefield with a blank piece of paper and announced a peace treaty. Which got the armies to stop fighting long enough for a _real_ treaty to be drawn up and signed.

**COMMAND.** Mazarin again, the darning-needle again.

Why, it's almost like someone is trying to talk to me. Thinking back, once we got off the name, the next words were … fuzzy. Ringy. Full of harmonics and overtones. Like they're not just the words they are, but also the words they're trying to be. Lots of words are like that. Subtext tells you a lot if you're paying attention, even more if you're professionally trained and acculturated to it. Hated my time as a lawyer - the company you end up keeping ranges from disagreeable to vile - but the skills are … I'm rambling.

Apparently dying doesn't cure bad habits.

Someone or something is trying to communicate with me. Is this my scrambled, dying brain trying to make sense of what the paramedics are saying to me?

**NO.** **MOIRAI.**

Well, _that_ was emphatic. I suppose that simple declarative sentences are too much to hope for?

The scene shifts to the sight of a firehose trying to fill a small bucket. Is this some "form you are comfortable with" bollocks, then?

**MOIRAI.** This time, there's a sense of amusement. And three part harmony. It's some kind of absurd dying dream in which mythology is trying to talk to me, I reckon. I feel strangely OK with this. The alternative, that there really _is_ a tri-partite personification of fate, the daughters of Old Night, whose spinning, cutting and weaving govern the very gods themselves, and they're talking to me instead of letting me get on with fucking dying? Absurd.

It's not even like they've had the decency to show up in their classical art depiction of scantily-clad women. Or their renaissance art depiction of _naked_ women. Which would certainly fit in better with the dream aspect of this whole thing. And be nicer to look at than the surrealist clothiers' workshop that has come back while I've been musing.

**MOIRAI. MESSAGE. COMMAND. **_**REPAIR**_**. **Again with the darning needle.

Fuck it, might as well play along. "You're going to need to be more specific. What am I commanded to repair? With what skills?" I mean, sure, I've got your basic functioning-adult skillset for fixing stuff that can be fixed with the 'order a new part off the internet' method, I've been servicing my own motors since I was a teenager, and grew up in a family of builders, engineers and generally handy individuals so I picked up a thing or two on my way to becoming a lawyer. Carrying out a divine mandate to fix things may require someone with, you know, actual _skills_.

**MESSAGE.** Again, Jules Mazarin. In context with the question about skills? I suppose it _might_ mean that the actual skills I need are the lawyers' stock-in-trade of bullshit, bluff, persuasion, advocacy and allied trades as exemplified by one of the most famous negotiating scams in the history of diplomacy, but if the Fates need that sort of thing what's stopping them, you know, hiring someone whose practising certificate isn't several years lapsed?

**COMMAND. REPAIR. **_**NEEDLE.**_ With a definite sense of exasperation to it, this last. Like I'm missing the bleedin' obvious. Which is, in context, _shut up and do as you're told, mortal, you are Our tool in this, fail not in this charge at your peril._ Et fucking cetera.

The image of the fire hose into the bucket, except this time the hose is shutting off and there's some water in the bucket.

Apparently, communicating entirely in dream images and a six word vocabulary leaves _lots_ of room for sarcasm.

I have room for some sarcasm of my own. Sure, I'm having a conversation with myself - this is all the hallucination of a dying brain, right? Unless I've been rescued and they've got me on the really _good_ drugs - but that's all the more reason not to have at the underlying absurdity of the thing. If you can't be critical of your own thinking, whose _can_ you be critical of?

"Leaving out the lack of detail as to what I'm supposed to be fixing, how am I supposed to do anything while I'm, you know, dead?"

**MOIRAI.** This time with an over-tone of gleeful, mocking laughter. And a snatch of the Mummy - the good one, not the hammed-up Hammer House original or the in-name-only re-make - specifically the bit where Imhotep is sinking into the black goo.

_Death is only the beginning._

"Well, that was -"

And everything goes black.

-oOo-

I'm still weightless, formless. A thoroughly disinheriting sensation, it has to be said. It's dark, but it's not the dark of no light, but the dark of a room with the lights off. Feels somehow small. I can't smell or feel anything, have no mouth to taste, but I can hear. And it no longer feels like I'm dreaming. I never got the hang of lucid dreaming - for want of effort to even find out if I even have the ability - so reality still feels real to me. And this feels real. Small, dark space. Somewhere outside it I can hear a telly blaring. Judging by the theme tune, someone's watching a re-run of Bergerac. I had no idea it was still playing anywhere, I've not heard that theme tune since I was a kid. It's distant, though. Not in the next room, somewhere else in the house.

Certainly not loud enough in here to cover up the fact that there's a child in here, sniffling. An _upset_ child. And that, frankly, _will not do_.

"Hey there, kid. What's up?" I've no idea if I can be heard - after the frankly bizarre conversation I've just had without a mouth to speak the words, it feels like it's worth a try. I go for my best there-there-tell-dad-all-about-it tone.

"Who's there?" Definitely a kid, sounds like a little boy, anywhere from three to puberty. Bit of a hitch in the voice. He's whispering, which isn't a good sign. An upset child alone in the dark who won't call out for help when a strange voice speaks to him? I've no idea what I can do about this, but at the very least someone's going to get a talking-to.

I whisper too. Kid wants to be quiet, I'll play along. "Me, kid. Not sure who I am right now." Nothing like dying to give you an identity crisis, after all. And, when all's said and done, I'm nothing but a voice in the dark. Like a ghost. _Ghost? Run with it._ "I think I might be a ghost? A friendly ghost, I should say."

"Uncle says there's no such thing." Still a bit of a hitch in the voice, but a note of intrigue too. That's good, I can work with that. My usual tactic was dad jokes until the tears stopped and we could work on the actual problem, but curiosity will do the job just as well. He's still whispering, though, which is _still_ not a good sign. Especially since whoever he doesn't want to be heard by has the telly up nice and loud. At least, I'm _assuming_ that the cheesy 80s detective drama fan is the problem, but let's wait and see.

"Well, I thought there was no such thing too, but look at me now. I bet your uncle will change his tune when _he's_ a ghost, I certainly have."

That gets me a small, slightly hiccupy giggle. _Result!_ "He'd be a great big fat ghost."

"Likes his pies, does he?"

"Yeah, an' buns, an' cream cakes, an' sweeties. He's _really_ fat. My cousin's the same."

"Your aunt too?"

"No, she's on a diet. She's _always_ on a diet."

"She grumpy all the time?" I've known plenty of slaves to the bathroom scales in my time, and they're not usually much fun to be around. Pretty sure it's the constant low blood sugar that does it.

"Yeah. Who're you the ghost of, anyway?"

If I had a mouth, I'd be smiling. I can't quite hear a smile in the little fella's voice quite yet, but we're making progress. "Oooh, now that's a good question. Let's see, I was fifty years old, I'd retired early from being a solicitor - that's someone who works with courts and laws and business deals - and I had three children all grown up and I had a crash on the motorway. And I died, and then it went all weird, and now I'm a ghost here with you. Why are we whispering, by the way?"

I don't get an answer right away. I wish I could see youngster's face because a silence at this point could mean _anything_ and kids communicate more with their expressions and body language than they do with their words.

After a while, another sniff. "My mummy and daddy died in a car crash. Are they ghosts too?"

Right this moment I could sing hymns of praise and gratitude that I don't have a heart, because it would be absolutely breaking in fucking bits for my new friend. "I don't know. Grown-ups don't know everything, I'm sorry to say, kid. And I've only been a ghost a few minutes, so I don't know much about how it works yet. You're the first person I've met since I - since the accident. I bet if your mum and dad could come and be ghosts here with you, they'd totally do it. I know I want to go see Peter, John and Emily but I haven't figured out how yet."

"Are they your children?"

"Yep. And I love them very much and I'm sure your mum and dad love you, wherever they are. So, how about we remember our manners and tell each other our names?" I'm pretty sure I'm not going to give my right name. I can see our conversation ending up in a child psychiatrist's office at some point and the last thing my grieving family need is this bizarre situation drawn to their attention. Hey, just because I don't have the necessary glandular apparatus to feel emotions, doesn't mean I don't remember and understand them.

"'kay. What's your name, ghost?"

Smart kid. He's treating the strange voice in the dark with suspicion, as well he ought. "Well, I think I'm going to pick a new name. You get a new name when you're born, I think I should have a new name while I'm dead. I'm going to pick Malcolm Reynolds. You ever seen _Firefly_ on the telly?"

"Not 'llowed t' watch telly," his whisper just got even smaller. "Telly's not f' freaks."

Well, that's just shitty. Not allowed telly is bad enough - obviously, kids need limits and encouragement to get off their arses and run around yelling, vital part of childhood is your running around and yelling - but telling a little kid he's a freak? As soon as I figure out how to haunt, I am going to make someone's life an utter misery until they repent. That's for the future, though, I've got an upset child in front of me. "That the rule in this house, kid?"

Silence.

"Is that a yes? Can't see you nodding, it's dark in here."

"Yes." _That_ whisper was hissed out. Oh, _well done,_ my young apprentice. You _should_ be angry about this.

"Well, first of all, it's just the rule in _this_ house. Everyone has different rules in their houses, and the rule in this house? It. Is. Stupid. Too much telly is bad for you, but no telly at all is just _stupid_. And why do they call you a freak?"

"'s my name."

My turn for the long silence. I'd guessed that I was talking to a young child, early years primary school at the latest. I revise it down to pre-school years, because _no way_ does anyone send a child to school thinking his name is _freak_. Even the _worst_ know to cover up what they're doing to the children in their doubtful care, and that would be a dead giveaway. When we get some light in here I'm checking for bruises. In my cold and chilly way I am angry about this, I just want to know whether I need to dial that up to murderous rage. Half-formed plans flash through my mind, but I can't really figure anything out until I know what I can do. Priorities!

"Right," I say, "you know how I said they had stupid rules in this house? This is _also_ stupid. Your mum and dad did _not_ name you freak. I reckon we need to find out what your name _really_ is. Don't know how yet, but I was pretty clever while I was alive so even if I can't do anything, I can whisper in your ear and help you along the way. Sound like a plan?"

"Don't know." Dejected. Accepting he's beaten before we've begun.

"Neither do I, kid, but we're going to have fun finding out, aren't we?"

Just sniffles. I don't think trying to jolly him along with promises of great things would help; if it turns out that all I can offer is a helpful voice in his ear then it's better than nothing. More than I got at this age, certainly. And bad as my childhood was, I was at least allowed to know my actual fucking _name_.

"Whatever happens, kid," I say, "I'm going to be at least a friendly voice in your ear, which is more than you had. It's going to take time, and probably hard work, so I won't say 'cheer up'. What I want you to do is be _brave_, kid."

"K." comes the quiet little sniffle. Seriously, if there are bruises on this kid then I'm going to find the local council childrens' services department and straight up _possess_ the biggest, most case-hardened social worker I can find. That's if I _can_ possess people, which remains to be seen. I'm definitely going to give it a fucking good _try._

"Now, is this your uncle's house we're in?"

"Yes."

"You think you can curl up in here and try and take a nap? I'm going to go and do a bit of haunting. Spook about the place quiet-like, see if I can find out your real name."

"Don't!" he's back to hissing again. "They'll blame _me! _If they see a ghost they'll say it's _freakishness!_"

This rings alarm bells in my mind. Big, loud, scary ones. If these people are seeing things and blaming the kid for them, they're not just abusers but _psychotic_ abusers. Not that I'm going to share that with a small child, he's hearing voices after all. _He_ doesn't know I'm actually real. "Well, I'll just have to be sneaky. Tell you what, though, do we have a light in here? Do you know where the switch is? I might be invisible, after all."

I hear scrabbling and the clack of a pull-switch knob being knocked against a wall, more scrabbling, and then _click_ and a bare bulb comes on.

What we've got here is a skinny little boy, eyes screwed up against the sudden light, tear-tracks down his face, shaggy mop of black hair, and pyjamas about three sizes too big. They're not feeding him right, he's four or five years old and all the puppy fat is gone. I was a scrawny little git at that age - fussy eater, and a mother who couldn't cook worth a bollocks - but I at least looked _healthy_. No visible bruises, for which small mercy I am appropriately thankful. "Can you see me, kid?" My viewpoint is down around his face level, and it's not much more effort than thinking to move about. Not quickly, but I can get about. I back up a bit.

"No," he says, opening his eyes up in narrow slits, his arm still stretched up to hold the pull-cord for the light. We're in an under-stairs storage cupboard of some sort, vinyl tile floor, unpainted plaster, a shelf of cleaning products and the household hoover. And a baby's cot mattress on the floor, the sort with the wipe-clean cover on it. _The fuckers make him _sleep _in here?_ There's not even a blanket or a pillow, never mind a duvet. Which, okay, not so bad in a small space in a centrally-heated house, but _damn_. I'm seeing the literary parallel and I am _not fucking impressed_. It's not actually the first time I've seen something like this: I did a stint as a local government lawyer and the Childrens' Services lawyers were just up the hallway. One of their 'frequent fliers' was a father who dragged his poor kid into his Star Trek fandom activities, about the only thing about him that _wasn't_ a symptom of his massive psychiatric unfitness to be a parent.

"Okay, light back off, it's hurting your eyes." The light goes right back off. I'm hoping I won't discover that someone expressing ordinary decent care for his comfort surprises him. "If I'm going to help you, I need to go scout about a bit, find out what's going on."

"Why?" Aaand I just found out it surprised him. I've _really_ got to find out how to take action as a ghost. If this _isn't_ what the weird dream was ordering me to fix, tough shit. Whatever that was about can fucking _wait_.

"I'm not _your _daddy, son. But I am _a_ daddy. And since my children are all grown up and can look after themselves, you're just going to have to put up with me looking after you. Savvy?"

"What's savvy mean?"

"It means 'understand'"

"K. And, um, I savvy. Um. Mister Reynolds sir."

"Good kid. Now, you curl up there and try and get a nap, I'm off to snoop about, but I'm not going to leave the house so if there's a problem I'll hear and I'll be right back. And call me Mal, we're going to be best friends."

"Not my daddy?"

"Not quite. I'll do as much of the stuff that daddies do for their children as I can, but I can't do all of it 'cos I'm a ghost. So just friends, savvy?"

"Savvy!" That was almost out loud. That's the spirit, kid! Well, strictly speaking _I'm_ the spirit, but this isn't the time for pedantry.

"Shiny. Now get your head down and nap, I've got spooky ghostly stuff to be getting on with. I'll be watching over you, just relax. All floppy like a rag doll and sleep will come nice and easy."

"Savvy." He actually yawns.

I go silent and wait a couple of minutes as his breathing settles down nice and regular. If he's shamming sleep, he's loads better at it than any of mine ever were. It's a bit sad that something that'd scare pretty much any other kid seems to reassure this one.

_Right_. I concentrate on rising up through the stairs. _Time to see what's fuckin' what around here._

First things first. The house I'm in is of fairly recent construction by English standards - I'm guessing Home Counties somewhere from the kid's accent. Houses built as entire estates, several streets at a time to a handful of standardised designs, were a thing that came in in the late sixties - I grew up in a house much like this in the early seventies. Fashions came and went in them and this one, if I'm any judge, is a mid to late seventies model. Still got its original storage heaters and bloody awful obscured-glass front door. I can see that it's still light out, looks like a late summer evening, and the street-lights will be coming on soon.

Inside, the decor's _wildly_ out of date. Flocked vinyl wallpaper, magnolia-gloss woodwork and I haven't seen carpet that vile since about 1990. In the borderline-condemned student digs in Oxford that my favourite weed dealer lived in. Brown with orange highlights and a repeating geometric pattern of interlocking diamond shapes. It's all fastidiously clean and surprisingly well-maintained for its age, though.

The walls are adorned with framed photos. I'm able to identify lard-arse and lard-arse junior which means the scrawny bint with the hairdo she's clearly been overcharged for is the dieting aunt. The kid under the stairs isn't included, which fits with him being the abused orphaned poor relation. I can't tell by looking which side of the family he's nephew to these two on; none of them look like blood relations. There's something else _off_ about the pictures, though I can't put my finger on quite what. The rest of what's hanging on the walls is the kind of tat people put up to try and crack on they're of refined sensibility. Cheap prints in gaudy frames. The usual suspects of Constable, Turner and Clayton Adams (which is to say all of their dullest, most unchallenging work, even the greatest of artists phone it in on occasion) are in evidence, and what I suspect are a couple of Preraphaelites, not that I could ever tell the buggers apart. And, of course, Monarch of the Glen, because what collection of tedious biscuit-tin-and-jigsaw-puzzle art would be complete without bloody Landseer. Still, I'm not here to be an art snob.

The hallway - and that dates the house, more recent builds don't waste quite this much space, you get a vestibule inside the front door and a bit of space at the bottom of the stairs - is otherwise unremarkable. Three doors: I'm guessing living room (the sound of the telly gives that one away), dining room and kitchen. And, of course, the stairs up. The only incongruous detail is that there's a land-line phone in the hallway by the front door, and it _looks_ like an original-vintage Trimphone, with the rotary dial and everything. I'm actually old enough to remember a time when they were considered modern and stylish. It makes me wonder what I'm dealing with, here. I mean, I might install one of those if I picked one up in easily-reconditioned nick, because they're a rather nifty slice of technological history, but then I've never been one to hide my full-frontal nerdity.

Maybe they're just really _committed_ to the retro decor? It's unimportant. After brief internal debate I decide to check upstairs first. While the kid assures me I'm invisible, I don't want to test that until _after_ I've gathered all of the information I can without risking being seen.

Upstairs is four bedrooms: the master bedroom (with actual chintz curtains, no less), a guest bedroom (whose bed has an actual candlewick bedspread of the kind my grandmother retired from actual bedding duty in about 1978 and bowls of pot pourri on every vaguely level surface), a kid's bedroom with a fat kid snoring in it surrounded by evidence of him being a spoilt bastard and your traditional fourth bedroom-in-name-only that appears to be being used as some kind of combined storage and junk room. The bathroom, with its pistachio-green tiling and sanitary ware, I decide to leave for later close inspection. I could probably make it a daily thing, a Two Minute Hate on aesthetic grounds alone. On top of it all, it's a household full of squeezers-from-the middle when it comes to toothpaste. Forced-labour re-education for the bloody lot of them would be a good start.

Anyway. Family of four in a four bedroom house? Making the kid sleep under the stairs is nothing but _spite_. Sure, I'm clearly in the home of authentically crazy people with a vintage decor and furnishings fetish - they don't even have duvets on the beds, for crying out loud, an amenity I remember having by the late seventies. Hang on, did I see - I go back in and check. The telly in the kid's bedroom is a CRT model. And next to it there's a _holy shit it's an Atari 2600_. They've given a kid who can't be more than six or seven an actual no-shit museum piece as a toy to play with. While keeping their other kid in conditions that suspects in police custody would rightly complain about.

_Fuck's sake_.

Again I'm glad I'm disembodied through all of this. I'd be in a towering fury by this point as opposed to the cool, calm consideration I'm giving things. Running, it has to be said, through a mental checklist for getting a Prohibited Steps Order under the Children Act 1989. Application _ex parte_ in judge's chambers and then turning up unannounced with a social work team and a van full of the biggest uniforms the local nick had on hand. He seems like a nice kid, any potential fosterers would find him a pleasure to have in their family. Especially with his friendly ghost giving him helpful advice about eating his greens and doing his homework. If nothing else, getting the poor kid out of this crime-against-good-taste of a house would be a step in the right direction. It's not his home, that's for sure.

The friendly ghost bit is probably also something I should be chucking a bit of radge over, if I'm honest with myself. Although with hindsight it would have put my suicidal periods in a bit of perspective if I'd known that it _wasn't_ a ticket to sweet, sweet oblivion.

Back downstairs and I Rentaghost my way through the dining room - surprisingly tasteful, with what might well be actual heirloom furniture - and the kitchen, which continues the vintage theme. Dating from the period just before fitted kitchens and standard base units with worktops became a thing. I'm relieved to see that the general cleanliness extends to a decent standard of food hygiene. I can't tell what they've got in the fridge and the cupboards, though. It's dark inside.

_Right. Time to see how well my picture of these people matches the reality._

I pause at the door to the living room, the sound of the telly thumping at the door. Whoever this is, they're more in to Bergerac than I ever was. From the sound of things there's a car chase on. The kid _was_ worried about me getting spotted, and going in through the door is the obvious move. If there's some way I can be seen even when I can't see myself, doing the obvious is going to put the risk up to the highest it can be.

Through the wall? Doesn't let me recce the room before moving in and I want to know where the telly, and with it all eyeballs in the room, actually _is_. The window, then, is the obvious choice. The curtains should be drawn, after all, but I'll be able to peep through. Out the front door, then - noting the expensive and heavyweight locks they've put on a glass door because _that_ makes sense - and a quick look at the neighbourhood. Your standard suburban cul-de-sac, one each. A dozen houses on a gently curved road with a turning circle at the bottom end. All built to the same design, which was a thing they did back when these were built, because planning officers didn't yet have a tick-box on their checklists for 'actual houses rather than soul-destroying extruded dwelling units'. There's a surprising lack of modifications, extensions and - it seems like the neighbourhood for it - york-stone cladding. Godawful identikit neighbourhoods like this were a big driver of the DIY boom, after all, as people turned them from units into houses into homes.

There are neighbourhood watch signs on the lampposts and a - wait. The cars in the driveways are _all_ old. Ford Granadas and Vauxhall Cavaliers, the sort that made up about half of every company car fleet. My dad had a succession of them, and most of them ended up as recycled scrap due to unsentimental fleet management practises. Very few of these sorts of cars were driven by people who actually owned them. I could buy _one_ slightly demented vintage car enthusiast on a street, but - a quick count - _six_ of them? The other houses appear to be using their semi-integral garages for keeping their cars in, another oddity. I mean, if you've got your car in the garage, where do you keep your huge piles of accumulated junk?

Lard-arse, apparently, favours a 1980s-looking 5-series BMW, which actually makes some sense as a vintage car. If you can afford to keep it on the road, that is. But it _does_ bring the total of vintage car enthusiasts on this street to seven. Out of twelve. And they are definitely enthusiasts, all of these motors are in good, like-new nick. I'm picturing them all out on Sunday afternoons with buckets and sponges and exotic car waxes, complaining to each other about the difficulty of getting pre-fuel-injection motors serviced. The Stepford Petrolheads.

If I had a head at this point I'd've shook it. I'm getting distracted because this house, this neighbourhood, is not just weird but _recursively_ weird. It looks odd at a distance and then when you focus on the details you find that it's just as odd close up. The important thing is finding out about the people, not just their _stuff_. Even if I was fully corporeal, I'd not be able to do anything until the appropriate authorities were open for business, so time taken in reconnaissance is doubly not-wasted.

I don't feel like I have an incorporeal body like something out of Ghostbusters, but I'm arbitrarily designating the point I'm seeing from as my head. I seem to have the same field of vision as I had when I had actual eyes, at any rate, and I kept _those_ in my head after all. So I gently and gingerly poke my head in through the window - windowsill covered in Royal Doulton and Lladro tat, naturally - and the (rouched and swagged rose velvet) curtains and get my first look at Fat Uncle and Dieting Aunt.

He's filling a brown velvet armchair and she's on the sofa. He's made entirely of rancid lard and moustache, sandy-blonde and no obvious grey. Head's too small for the fat neck and the rest of him is blubber all the way down. Fat fingers are dabbling in a tin of shortbread on the occasional table next to his chair where he also has a bottle of mass-market blended scotch. I move closer and look at the hands. Yep. Clubbed fingers. Bloaty-boy is eating and boozing his way in to an early grave. Barely in to his thirties if I'm any judge of wrinkles and thread-veins, but he's less healthy than some seventy-year-olds I've known.

She, on the other hand, is sitting primly with a magazine of some sort in one hand and what is more than likely a G&T in the other. She's the direct complement of her husband, in as much as she's malnourishing herself into premature ageing. Early thirties, could pass for fifty in the wrong light. Whatever her natural colour is, it's covered up by a salon dye-and-highlights job and a perm that was last fashionable in the 1970s. On professional football players.

The art of conversation is clearly lost in contemplation of whatever Jim Bergerac is doing in this episode - she's pretending not to be watching but sneaking glances in best housewife-with-a-celebrity-crush style. I don't doubt she's an avid fan of Magnum PI, Lovejoy, and Dempsey and Makepeace on the same basis. Any sexual attraction has long since fled the bedroom upstairs, I shouldn't wonder. Even if Fat Uncle can even find the wretched thing amid the rolls of gut, he hasn't the cardiovascular oomph to get it up.

Time for an experiment. I move in to the middle of the room and get right in front of the telly. No reaction. _Definitely_ invisible, which takes a load off my mind. I'll work on whether they can hear me in a bit. Right now, let's look at the coffee table. Mail, Express, Telegraph and Financial Times, not just drawing a picture of the politics of this household but colouring it in and mounting it in a handsome presentation frame. Tories, and unreconstructed Thatcherite tories at that, with which even the _possibility_ of me mustering any sympathy for these two evaporates like Brexit promises.

Hang on. Hang _right_ the fuck on. I've read the titles off those newspapers and glossed over the design, and it's _all_ wrong. None of them have looked like that in decades. The pictures are in black-and-white, for crying out loud. A closer look. They're dated 31st July 1985.

Okay. Occam's razor time. Which is the simplest explanation that fits these facts? Is it that I've manifested in a neighbourhood of eerily-consistent retro fetishists in the house of a couple who carry it to the point of reproduction newspapers on the coffee table? Or that dying and coming back as a ghost also included a time travel component?

One of these presupposes that there's something I don't know about how time works for the spirits of the recently departed. Which, yeah. I'm working on less than an hour's experience here. The other flies in the face of everything I know about how human beings work, on which subject I've got nearly fifty years time-in-grade. And, if we add in the surreal visions I had while I was dying (or just after I died, I don't really have any way to tell) then my being under orders to fix the tapestry of fate gives the time-travel bit of it quite the freight of plausibility, don't it?

It definitely makes it harder vis a vis the abused child part. Victoria Climbie and Baby P are nearly two decades in the future at this point, and the law reforms that would make what these two fucks are up to actually illegal won't happen until after the next change of government. Child abuse, after all, is a problem of the underclass, so there's no funding or legislative time for stopping it. (And, because child abuse is a problem of the underclass, nobody's going to believe it goes on in the kind of household that has a BMW in the driveway.)

I still need to confirm the time-travel bit, and it happens along as conveniently as BBC programming: Bergerac ends and, after a few trails for shows I can't recall watching at the time, and Threads, which I _very_ much remember because the imminent possibility of nuclear holocaust makes an impression, on comes the Nine O Clock News. Presented by Julia Somerville, which surprises me. She's still working in broadcast news in 2019, I didn't think she got on the telly this early.

The news itself is a collage of half-remembered history. Apartheid era South Africa showing their collective arse, and the Common Market - which won't be the EU for a few years yet - disagreeing about how to deal with them. Ronald Reagan might be dying of cancer, on which matter I know more than his doctors as at this date. He isn't. The inquiry into the Bradford FC stadium fire (about which I remember little more than the schoolyard sick jokes, it was a more robust time) has created some fuss and Thatcher is giving off about it. Lacking context - I wasn't paying attention at the time and it's been thirty-five years - I'm mostly baffled by the headlines of what was clearly a slow news day. There's a Shuttle mission in orbit, and both sides are expressing high hopes for the Fourth Test of this year's Ashes series, with Botham in particularly ebullient form. But then, when was he ever _not?_

I can't remember who won that year. This year, I suppose, but the Aussies won't be quite the juggernaut they were - will be - in the 90s and beyond, so it could be an England win. Fat Uncle is giving off about it, though, since apparently level-pegging with a win and a draw each on three Test matches is clearly below the standards he personally expects from English Cricket. Like he'd last more than two fucking overs at the crease, even in the more gentlemanly atmosphere of the professional game. The game I grew up with - north country working class cricket - would see him carried off the field after the second or third ball. Likely missing teeth and with an almost certain concussion.

Nursing yet another reason to disdain the fool, I'm barely paying attention as the news comes to an end and this pair of delightful specimens start conversing and I almost miss the names they address each other by.

Vernon.

And Petunia.

What the double-jointed haemhorraging _fuck?_

This is carrying fandom a bit - no it's not. Those books won't come out for a few years yet. This right here is a scene out of actual _fiction_. Feels real, though. Simulated reality? Apart from my own personal but still subjectively real existence, it's indistinguishable from actual reality, so no point arguing the toss. Proof by solipsistic fatalism is going to have to do.

They're shuffling about and making as if to retire for the night - ludicrously early, but it is a school night and I've plenty of _other_ reasons to despise these two - so if I'm going to get any more information I need to get a wiggle on while the lights are on. There's a letter-rack on the mantelpiece with unanswered correspondence in it. Couple of bills, a rates notice. The address is clearly visible: Mr. and Mrs. V. Dursley, 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. With, as it happens, a TW postcode, so we're nearer London than not.

So, I'm _definitely_ not in Kansas anymore. Again with the gratitude for no hormones and glands, because this is definitely the right time for hysterical giggling. That kid under the stairs is Harry James Potter and he's a wizard.

That theory that everything, no matter how absurdly fictional, is real somewhere? It just acquired my own personal anecdotal data point.

Fuck. Me. Standing.

* * *

NOTES: I've absconded with the central conceit from The Evil Overlord List by Boomvroomshroom (on this site and AO3 to my certain knowledge, don't know if it's posted elsewhere) which I recommend to one and all. The obvious difference between that story and this is the time period - I've stuck firmly to the books, although I'll be correcting JKR's cavalier approach to dates as I go - and the character the voice is helping: Harry, rather than Tom.

As to the muggle-world history and details I refer to, there are a couple of places where I'm going with purely what I remember rather than checking details as I write the first draft, on the basis that if I really was hurled back into a fictional past, I'd have to wait ten years for search engines to be invented, never mind Google.

Not least of which errors, in this chapter, is that the child protection laws are _very_ different to the ones I learned. At this particular date, I had just finished my third year of secondary school and was getting ready to buckle down for my GCSEs (muggle OWLS). Which is why I'm dead flat wrong about the law and practise of child protection in the mid 80s. It's also why none of the news made sense: in 1985 I was more focussed on homework, pickup games of cricket in the park, and friday night Call of Cthulhu marathons with my friends.


	2. I'm not having this, not at all

Disclaimer: Did the Dursleys keep a poor-relation orphan nephew in the cupboard under the stairs without one single nosy suburbanite arsehole gossip-monger noticing their odd behaviour? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Chapter 2

_The address is clearly visible: Mr. and Mrs. V. Dursley, 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging._

_So, I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore. Again with the gratitude for no hormones and glands, because this is definitely the right time for hysterical giggling. That kid under the stairs is Harry James Potter and he's a wizard._

_That theory that everything, no matter how absurdly fictional, is real somewhere? It just acquired my own personal anecdotal data point._

_Fuck. Me. Standing._

Well, I can't stand - float, rather - around being all gobsmacked. I'm a ghost, no gob to be smacked _in_, for one thing.

Hang on. If this is running by Harry Potter rules, I'm not actually a ghost, am I? Harry would be able to see me, squibs would be able to see me. I'd be able to interact with my environment, at least to the extent of turning the taps on if I was haunting a bathroom. Whatever I am, it's either something that's unknown to the wizards or at least something that didn't make it in to the books.

That I might be in the movie version I don't consider for a moment. I've only seen four human beings so far and none of them look like their actors, the house in the movie is a completely different architectural style - which is all wrong for the dates in the books, as it happens - and I've never seen any of the movies more than once whereas I've re-read the books several times and so I'm hoping my knowledge is actually apropos. If Harry gets on that train in six years' time and meets Emma Watson, though, all bets are off.

_And get a clear distinction between canon and fanfiction drawn in your mind,_ I remind myself. _Unless you see incontrovertible evidence that there's more deviation from the books than just your presence. _

I can't even entirely rely on my knowledge of the muggle world for more than the superficialities. This version of it has at least three, possibly four towns that don't exist in my world and while the generalities are unlikely to be much different, the specifics might well be. And I have absolutely no way of telling the difference: to pick an example I just saw on the news, if England win the Ashes this year is that the way it happened in my 1985 or not? I honestly can't remember.

I'll have to pay close attention to the news in any event. I grew up in a world that as far as I knew didn't have a secret society of mages hiding away from the world and only interacting as little as they possibly could. This one does, and there have to be at least some butterfly effect differences. If I can get Harry in front of a history of Nazi Germany I should be able to spot some differences, since it's a period I know pretty well and Grindelwald running amuck in that neck of the woods is bound to have made some difference I can spot.

Or maybe it won't have. It has to be said, the history of Europe from 1914-1945 in my own world would actually make a lot more sense if there really _were_ sinister wizards behind the scenes with mind-control spells. Some of the decision-making was breathtakingly demented, and that's without the Thule Society and their Ariosophical beliefs in the descent of the Aryan peoples from extraterrestrial electric goddesses and their unfortunate interactions with subhuman rape-monkeys. Which isn't any kind of joke: that was a real thing that people took seriously enough in early 20th century Germany to form debating societies and print newsletters about. Doesn't have to be wizards behind the scenes, of course, they'd just invented meth and were selling it over the counter without prescriptions. That'd be diagnostic: if Nazi Germany's history is the same but the meth consumption figures are lower than I remember, then wizards.

I spend a few moments thinking my way around in circles about what the hell I'm going to do - can I affect the material world? If not, can I learn how? Is there any magic that can construct me a body? Actually, there's at least _one_ method, but I'd like to find one without any unhygienic messing about with ancestral bone, servants' flesh and enemies' blood, or drinking snake venom in _any_ quantity. Nothing else, I want a body that still has its fucking nose. Voldemort might have been going for 'serpentine visage' but to me that says 'congenital syphilis' a lot more emphatically. While I'm woolgathering, the Dursleys retire to bed and put the light out.

There's enough light in here that I can see what's what, but apparently ghostly eyes have the same response to light conditions that my human ones did. With better visual acuity, unless I'm wearing ethereal spectacles. I need to start finding what my limits are, and whether I can do anything about them. A quick check in the mirror above the mantelpiece and I learn that I can't see me either, but then I knew that already. You can always see your own nose, if nothing else.

The obvious test is whether or not anyone other than Harry can hear me. That would imply a whole lot of other stuff about what I'm supposed to be doing here - goodness knows there's a lot to fix about Harry's life, but if he's the only one I can talk to it gives me a very clear focus for my efforts. Among other things, and I'm going to have to think about that. Anyway: can I be heard by anyone else? Not testing that on the Dursleys, their response to anything 'freaky' will hurt Harry. Which: not on. They're at least close to the line for criminal neglect of a child as at this time. Harry is going to survive it in reasonable if underfed health, and I don't want to be the one that tips these freaks over the edge into outright monsterdom.

Do I need to test it right now? It's not like I'm confined to the house, I've been outside once already. Can I get back in if I cross the property line? Does it work like vampires? I've collected a lot of folklore over the years, which bits of it are true in this universe? Plus there's that nebulously described protection over this house that Dumbledore enacted. The fact that I'm in here right now suggests that I can get back in if I go for a wander, unless the boundary is as meaningful magically as it is for the property registration certificate.

What decides me is that I've only spoken to Harry once, and that briefly. If I get magically locked out, it's just one half-remembered dream. Leaving things until he's started relying on me in any way would be cruel. Finding out now is better, since he'll be starting primary school in September and I'll be able to get back with him then. The Dursleys are doing the absolute legal minimum for the poor kid, so he's missing his reception year entirely by reason of his late birthday. They're going to tell him his name so he can answer to it at school, and I don't doubt that they've made sure the staff have been told he's a problem child well in advance. They've had a year of parent-teacher interaction via Dudley to get the message across. Have to figure out a plan for that when the time's nearer.

For now, I drift out through the window again. The sun is fully set, twilight is over and the streetlights are on in all their orange-tinted glory. Down to the end of the drive, and look about. Nobody's out and about, but the sound of traffic is there in the distance. This close to London there's no escaping it. The sky is busy with aircraft, low enough that their winking navigational lights are easy to spot. No way to tell whether it's traffic for Heathrow, Gatwick or both.

From the looks, Little Whinging is one of those dormitory villages for people who can afford to commute to work in Greater London, what used to be called the Stockbroker Belt.

It's an old-fashioned village with at least one reasonably well-heeled housing estate built on to it. Right on the edge of the Greater London sprawl, still palpably rural but close enough to the metropolis that you can't quite call it country. Amazing what you can deduce from just one cul-de-sac, isn't it? Familiarity with several examples from my own world helps a lot with this sort of thing.

I start moving down the pavement and discover that with a bit of effort I can get my movement up to about a fast walk. I'm not conscious of any effort, but if I lose focus I slow right down. Privet Drive gives way to Magnolia Crescent - the main drag through the estate - and, just across and a little along the way, Wisteria Walk, with a combination Spar, newsagents and post office on the corner. I spend a little time drifting about: the housing estate is nearly a hundred homes, built to a whopping six different designs, and Privet Drive seems to be all the big expensive ones. It's the usual mess of curving streets and random patches of grass and a small play-park with swings, roundabout and seesaw, all cut through with what we'd call ginnels where I'm from but the rest of the world calls alleys.

The actual historic Little Whinging is a couple of dozen much older houses either side of one of Surrey's smaller A-roads. It consists, beside the houses, of two pubs, a church that's early 19th century if I'm any judge, and a short parade of shops next to the near end of Magnolia Crescent. The most exotic of which is the Chinese takeaway, which has apparently been shut since nine. I'm going to have to wait twenty years before 24-hour shopping and food delivery become a thing again. What Little Whinging doesn't have is its own railway station, but this close to London there'll be one within reasonable bus-ride if not walking distance. The primary school looks to be down the main road a mile or two - I can just see the school crossing lights in the distance - doubtless serving Little Whinging and the next village over alike, with kids bussed in from a wider area for Stonewall High.

I check at the church that I can enter and leave holy ground and discover that while the chap walking his dog through the graveyard can't hear me declaiming 'the Bishop of Buckingham' at full volume, his dog is aware enough of me to look right at me and woof a vague doggy greeting. I tell him he's a Good Boy and move on. _All_ of the cats I've encountered on the way here have given me Hard Stares, the basic impoliteness of cat-kind being much in evidence. The one thing that _can_ see me is the graveyard's other supernatural occupant. There's a Church-Grim lounging by the lych-gate, barely visible as a shimmering dog-shaped collection of shadows. He can see me, and hauls himself to his feet.

There's no sense of urgency to it, he takes the time to stretch and pads over with a slowly-wagging tail. At least I _think_ he's wagging his tail, the whole made-of-shadow thing being altogether visually confusing. I suspect that I'd be able to see him better if I was firmly within his jurisdiction of departed-soul-needing-company-for-final-walkies. Certainly the living only get to see him and his kind when they're about to die. He shows no sense of urgency about approaching me, just a good boy looking to make a new friend. I pass an idle few minutes inquiring who, exactly, _is_ the Good Boy and confirming that it is, in fact, him. He's clearly doing his job of taking folk where they need to go in as much as there don't seem to be any ghosts present. Everyone buried here has been properly escorted to their ultimate destination. What a good boy!

We take a turn or two around the rest of the graveyard, chatting all the while - I'm supplying the Grim's lines, as all good doggy conversations should go - and I indulge in one of my favourite pastimes, that of looking for picturesque names. There's not much of a haul - even the 18th century graves have decidedly ordinary occupants, but I do learn that while the church may be relatively new, it's built on the site of a much older one. There are still-legible 17th century graves, including one from slap in the middle of the Civil War, and a couple that might well be even older but are too weathered to be sure of. I'm faintly reassured that I've got it right about where and with whom I am by the presence of the Grim. They are, after all, canon to Harry Potter and I don't have to worry about him being a death omen what with already being dead.

All of this noodling about carries me through to midnight, and I return to Privet Drive to discover that, whatever enchantments are on number 4, they don't keep me out. Which makes at least _some_ sense, since they're based on Lily Potter's intent to protect her son, whatever Dumbledore may have done after the fact. Being a parent myself, I'm a hundred per cent on board with that, and mean to help.

Which leaves finding out to what extent I can. Sure, I can do a lot just as a voice in Harry's ear being the ultimate Helicopter Parent, but I'd look a prize berk if I stuck to just that and it turned out that with a bit of effort and experimentation I could have done more, right?

Right.

I think I need to find somewhere else, though. I'm already resolved to not provoke the Dursleys - not riling up obvious lunatics is a good general principle for life, memo: teach that one to Harry at some point - so I think I'm going to go and haunt someone a couple of streets away. Not on Wisteria Walk, Dumbledore has an agent there and while he's a good guy with faults in the books, if I'm going to be meeting the man I want to be a lot better prepared than 'hey, I died and found myself here with this kid and decided to help'. I wouldn't trust the bona fides of a wandering spirit telling that story, after all, no more than the village idiot would. So no tipping off Mrs. Figg that there's something uncanny going on. She's available if Harry needs to get a message to Dumbledore and that's where I mean to leave it for now.

Several hours of patient effort in a house picked for its occupants being away on holiday reveals that I can, with _huuuuuge_ focus, flip a light switch, turn pages and make light fittings swing gently. I don't notice it getting any easier with repetition, but decide to keep in practise. If wandering spirits can get swole with constant exercise, I mean to do it.

I get back to Number 4 when the sky's properly light, about half past five by the clock in the Dursleys' hallway, just as the milkman is leaving Privet Drive for the next part of his round. I get a moment of nostalgia at the sight of a uniformed milkman driving an electric milk float; they'll be a dying breed in fifteen years and gone altogether in thirty. He's left three pints of milk, a pint of orange juice, a dozen eggs and a loaf of sliced bread at Number Four. Petunia rises at six thirty, brings it all in and gets the kettle on: they've clearly not got Harry started on cooking yet. She bangs on the door of Harry's cupboard, pulls back the bolt and throws it open.

"Up, Freak. Go use the loo and clean your teeth. And get back down here and back in your hole before your Uncle gets up." She hisses the words, and Harry's in there looking all vulnerable and startled awake.

"I'm still here, kid," I say. "Petunia can't hear me, but you can. Don't say anything, just get upstairs to the loo."

Petunia doesn't respond, but Harry smiles briefly and then gets his head down and scampers. In the bathroom, he closes and bolts the door. "Is that you, Mal?" he whispers

"Yep," I say. "You keep whispering, they can't hear me so I can talk normally. You need the loo, and don't worry, I'm looking away."

Poor kid gets bashful kidney anyway, but finally manages. "Oh, no." he murmurs when he's done.

I look round. Small nervous boy, toilet too tall, inevitable accident. "Don't panic," I tell him. "Get some toilet roll, yes, like that, bit more, now scrunch it up and wipe up. Down the loo with it, don't flush yet, you don't want Petunia to know you're done. Now, wash your hands. Running tap, that's right." I talk him through washing his hands properly. He _might_ have been taught, but I doubt it. He's able to reach well enough to wash his face as well, enough to get the tear-streaks squared away.

I move on to proper brushing of the teeth and Harry hisses "I _know_ how to brush my teeth."

"You know how Aunt Petunia has taught you. I'm teaching you to do it _right_, kid."

A brief widening of the eyes and he follows instructions like a good boy.

"Right, now flush and go down the stairs at a sensible pace. What usually happens next?"

"Aunt Petunia gives me breakfast and locks me in until Uncle goes to work."

"Well, let's be about it. As soon as we're in the cupboard, which is now our _secret base_, I'll tell you what I learned while you were sleeping."

Downstairs, Harry gets his breakfast - two slices of bread and marge and a glass of milk, neither generous nor stingy but assuredly not right for a growing boy - and he's made to eat it sitting on the kitchen floor out of what I assume is pure spite. He's eating quickly and swallowing fast with what looks like the ease of considerable practise. I try not to pay attention to this since I'm already _quite_ angry enough, thank you very much.

Instead, I watch Petunia. She's splitting her attention between cooking breakfast, the little boy on the floor and the doorway back to the hall, an air of watchfulness about her. I'm fairly sure, watching her, that the driver for a lot of the shit that Harry's getting is actually Vernon, and she wants him out of sight before her husband is up. I'm not cutting Petunia any moral or ethical slack for this, of course: there's no call for accepting Harry's lot as any kind of way to treat a child, unwanted poor relation or no. She has options that a short green-form interview with any general practice solicitor could open her eyes to, along with a great deal of information about how very easy divorce and restraining orders are to get.

As soon as the milk glass is empty Harry gets hustled back under the stairs and she locks him in. She leaves the key in the lock, which opens up a whole _world_ of possibilities vis a vis my poltergeisting the shit out of her security precautions.

I ghost through the door. "All OK there, kid?"

There's enough light coming through around the edges of the door - the glass front door may be tacky, but it means the hall is well lit - that I can see Harry nodding.

"Shiny -" There's a thundering as of the sky falling in, which interrupts me. "What the _blazes_ is that?"

"Uncle and Dudley coming down for breakfast." Harry's whisper has no intonation, because this is his normal.

"What a pair of bloody _elephants," _I remark, for the reward of a quiet little giggle. When you're five, hearing grown-ups swear is _always_ funny. "Right, keep quiet while I go listen in on breakfast. If I know their plans for the day we might be able to get up to some fun. Mischief, even."

Harry's grin lights up the tiny space we're in, and I wish with all my might for a face to smile back with. Nearly four years of Dursley bullshit and he can still smile. Proper little soldier you are, my lad.

A few more reassuring remarks and I'm ghosting about the kitchen while the zoo exhibits sit down to breakfast. Toast and eggs and sausages and beans and bacon and fried bread and fried mushrooms and black pudding and holy jesus Vernon Dursley, a man eats like that and he doesn't exercise, he goin' to _die_. I'm as in favour of the Full English Breakfast as any proud son of Albion, but he's putting away the signature breakfasts of all four home nations in one sitting. He'd probably have a crack at the rest of the Commonwealth, but he's dead against any 'queer foreign muck' unless I much misjudge my man. Fucker even eats the grilled tomatoes, the mark of a wrong 'un in my book.

One might deduce that there was something wrong with Vernon - he grew up with a sister who could casually tell an orphan he ought to have been drowned and double down with an insult to his dead mother, tell me _that_ didn't come out of a dysfunctional family I defy you - but what he's eating isn't breakfast, it's passive suicidal ideation. It's not like nobody knows that overeating is unhealthy: I'm pretty sure the F-Plan has been out for a couple of years by now. Wouldn't surprise me if Petunia - one slice of toast, no butter, one half grapefruit, one generalised air of misanthropy - had an autographed copy. I can't remember precisely when cholesterol got identified as one of the baddies, but I'm sure it was earlier than this.

My point, here, is that stuffing down a breakfast of that heft and variety on top of already morbid obesity is self-destructive behaviour, and you'd have to be _invincibly_ ignorant not to know that. I'm willing to bet that he'll be snacking the rest of the day, eat a hearty lunch, come home to a dinner even bigger and then punish the whisky for a couple of hours to wind down. In the books, Vernon was still alive in 1998 and it's actually something of a surprise. Small wonder that he treats everyone around him like crap: he clearly hates himself.

Amateur psychoanalysis aside, I learn that Dudley will be at a childminder's today, Vernon at work, and Petunia at a regular coffee-and-bridge thursday. Vernon opines that the month-end meeting will see him kept late, and Dudley tries to get out of going to the minder's by throwing a nasty little tantrum that his father treats as him being an adorable scamp rather than cause for five minutes on the naughty step. I'm against corporal punishment for children - never raised a hand to my own, and proud of how they turned out - but lord, twenty minutes watching Dudley stuffing his face, whining, and kicking his parents makes me want to fetch the wee bastard a ding around the ear'ole with a sock full of shit.

I was mistreated as a child, and Harry's having an even rougher go of it than I did, but at least neither of us were never trained to be hated as adults the way the Dursleys are doing with their own crotchfruit. Vernon outright praises the little shit for trying his hardest to get his way, although I can see that Petunia wants to re-open an argument she clearly lost before the boy could talk. One can only hope that school can undo some of the damage before he reaches the age of criminal responsibility. From the look of things, the childminder also has some ideas on the subject of behaviour that Dudley doesn't care for much. I wish her, whoever she is, good luck and good hunting.

Ghostly calm or no, I have to take a moment or two to compose myself before going back in to the cupboard with Harry, who quite sensibly is getting a nap. Sleeping makes the time go faster, a lesson I remember learning around his age. I go back to surveillance on the Dursleys; Vernon heads out to work, while Petunia gets Dudley dressed and ready for the walk to whoever she's dumping him on for the day. I'm pleased to see that with Vernon not present she's actually somewhat firmer with him. On the way out, she bangs on the cupboard door. "Freak! You behave yourself in there. I'll be back at lunchtime."

Dudley gives the door a kick and yells "Freak!", which Petunia lets pass without comment.

I go back in to see that Harry has been startled awake. "I'm here, kid," I tell him. "Let's just wait until they're out of the house."

It's a tense few minutes until we hear the front door close and Petunia's heels clack off down the garden path.

"Mal, are you _really_ a ghost?" Harry asks, once it's quiet.

"I'm really a ghost. I was alive, then I got deaded, and now I'm here. Haunting you. Wooooo!"

Harry giggles. "Why?"

"I really don't know, Harry. But I'm going to help if I can, because there's just _too much stupid_ in this house."

"Who's Harry?"

"You are! Told you I'd find out your real name and I did. Harry James Potter. Oh, and since I didn't know the date yesterday, Happy Birthday and sorry I'm a day late." Name and birthday will do to start with; dumping everything on him at once would be unkind. It's not like we don't have time locked in this here cupboard.

A frown. "Freaks don't have birthdays."

"Harries do, though."

More giggling. "How old am I?"

"Five, Harry. And you'll be going to school quite soon. You _should_ have been going at the same time as Dudley, but your Uncle and your Aunt are _stupid_." Wouldn't surprise me if they've been concealing the mere fact of Harry's existence from everyone until quite recently, because otherwise sending Harry to school with Dudley would be the more _normal_ thing to do.

More giggling.

"Now, your Uncle and Aunt don't know that you know your name, so until they do, Harry James Potter is your secret name that you mustn't tell anyone. If they find out you know, they'll want to know how, and you can't tell them about me because they're stupid and scared of ghosts and magic."

"Magic?"

"Magic, Harry. Ghosts are part of magic. If there wasn't magic, ghosts couldn't talk like I do. Or sing like I do -" I give him a chorus of _The Cat's Got No 'Air On_ which has him laughing until he hiccups - "or do _this." _I turn the key in the lock and give the door a push.

"Not 'llowed out," he whimpers, scuttling back in to the corner.. The _fuckers_ have clearly tried to trick him like this before.

"Not allowed to get _caught_, Harry," I tell him, gently. Not letting any of my anger in to my voice is proving quite the challenge. "And here, let me show you that it wasn't your Uncle opening the door. It was _me_."

The pull switch for the light in the cupboard is quite hard to work, but it's only a couple of seconds. On, and then off.

Harry gasps. And grasps the implication _immediately_. From the look on his face, he's getting firmly in touch with his inner Naughty Little Boy.

"Now, with Mal the friendly ghost to help, it's time to do some scouting."

"What's scouting?" Of course, he's been raised in a fucking cupboard, he's got huge holes in his vocabulary.

"Looking about all sneaky like and not getting caught," I tell him. "First thing, we're going to the front door to check the car's gone."

It takes him a couple of tries to get up the nerve to leave the cupboard, but he manages like a little hero in the end. I explain to him about keeping low so's nobody looking in can see him, which windows he doesn't have to do that with because they're at the back or upstairs, and that time is important but I'll watch it for him and tell him when it's time to scamper back to his secret base.

After a tour of the house (_watch whether a door is open or closed and leave it that way_) I get him back to the kitchen just after ten and walk him through the basics of Stealing Food So They Don't Notice It's Gone. He ends up with a surprising amount of choice - Petunia has dozens of opened packets of fad-diet stuff, slimmers' meal bars are starvation rations for a grown woman but hearty nosh for Harry. The supply of sweeties and cakes for Dudley and Vernon is easy to raid, and Harry takes to covering up the evidence with aplomb. I reckon I've got five hundred calories down his neck in under half an hour.

We've just finished cleaning up when Harry says "Uh oh."

I recognise the expression and stance. Number two inbound, by the looks. "Need the loo?"

He nods.

"Bad?"

Another nod.

"It's getting fed properly that does it. Off you go, then."

"Aunt hasn't said I can."

"Mal _says you must_. Aunt Petunia is the _enemy_, Harry, and you only have to _pretend_ to do as she says. Loo! Now!"

He grins as he runs for the stairs. Drifting along after him, I'm heartened that he was so ready for a minor act of rebellion, but annoyed that his first conscious revolutionary acts against the Dursley Regime include taking a shit. We've a long way to go before we work our way up to arson and riot.

"You know how to wipe your bum?" I yell through the door.

"Yes! Aunt Petunia made me learn," he yells back. There's at least _some_ normality in this house, then.

I drift in when I hear the toilet flush, and Harry's trying to get his pyjama trousers to stay up. There's a worried look on his face. "Aunt Petunia ties them up for me." he says. And, of course, if they're not tied when she gets back she's going to _know._

"Time to learn for yourself," I tell him, interrupting the panic before it can really take hold. "Get the strings in your hands and cross them over …" It takes a few minutes, but concentrating calms Harry down and I've got the patience of the literally dead. I slip in a few asides about how knots work and things you can do with them, because time spent educating a child is seldom wasted. Once we've got Harry's trousers properly secured, we go over Washing Our Hands and Cleaning Our Teeth again, and also checking the bathroom to make sure there's no obvious signs of use. Teaching Harry to be stealthy and confident in his stealth is going to pay dividends later: I didn't figure it out until I was ten or so and thereby suffered more than I might have done if I'd been smarter.

More chatting in the bathroom leads Harry to let me know that he does get a bath 'sometimes' in Dudley's used bath-water. I'm fairly sure that Dudley is the kind of difficult customer that makes enough of a fuss over bathtime that his mother keeps it to once a week. Not a problem per se, most kids are over-washed anyway and they don't start to pong until they're teenagers, but Harry, judging by the quick and eager responses to instructions on getting clean, is a naturally fastidious kid. Figuring out safe times for surreptitious bathtime is a project for later, I decide.

I stick my head through the wall to check on the Dursley's bedside alarm clock, which is actually a Goblin Teasmade. Which doesn't appear to get used. Could be because Vernon's a power-tripping gobshite who makes his wife get up to make his tea of a morning, could be because Petunia _wants_ to get up to keep hubby from waxing wrathful over the sight of a Freak at breakfast time. "It's half past eleven, Harry," I say once I'm back in the pistachio-green hell of the Dursley bathroom, "time to go and pretend you've been in the cupboard all morning." A last check that the bathroom and kitchen are in order and the wrappers from brunch are properly buried under the rubbish from breakfast and I lock us in.

"Harry James Potter," I say once he's settled down. "That's your name. Now, I didn't find everything in just one night, but it's a start, isn't it?"

Harry nods. Big round eyes, he's drinking it all in. He's five and spends most of his time locked up in the dark, so he doesn't have any trouble accepting that he's got a ghost helping him.

"Now, your mum was Lily Potter, and your dad was James Potter. I know about them from hearing stories when I was alive, I never met them myself, but they were heroes who died in a war."

"Not in a car crash?"

"No, not in a car crash. Dying in a car crash is dead rubbish. I know, because that's how I died."

"Did it hurt?" Because _of course _ a little kid is going to go off on every tangent imaginable and it's not like we're under pressure of time, here.

"A bit, at first, and then when I died it didn't hurt any more." _It just all got really confusing for a while and took a hard swerve into the outright surreal. I'm pretty sure I'm in a fanfic at this point. _"It all went strange, and then it all went black, and the next thing I knew I was in our secret base with you, a long way from home."

"Cor. Is that why you talk funny? You sound like Coronation Street."

Turns out that the dead can laugh. "Harry, I don't talk funny. I talk properly, it's you southerners that talk funny!"

"I do _not!_" Proper little-boy indignation. They've not broken him entirely, for all their effort, and I must be doing something right if he's comfortable enough to back-chat me this quickly.

"I know, I know, I'm just joking with you. I talk like I do because this is how everyone talks where I lived. Which is quite near Coronation Street, actually. When you grow up, you'll find everyone thinks that where they live is where people talk properly and everywhere else is where they talk funny. It's best to make jokes about things like that, or you end up stupid like your Uncle Vernon."

My attempt to introduce an important teachable moment misses the mark: five-year-old minds are an erratic and fast-moving target. "Coronation Street's _real_? Not just on the telly?"

Of course he's heard it. Apparently the TV comes with only two settings in this house: Loud and Too Loud. And Petunia, a stereotype down to the very bones of her, watches her soaps religiously. I decide to go with it. "Coronation Street is real, yes. I've visited there." No need to tell him it's just a TV set at Granada Studios and they do tours.

"Jack Duckworth is my favourite," he tells me solemnly. I like this kid: I used to think Jack Duckworth was brilliant too, not least because I knew about five real-life Jack Duckworths; he was a very well-observed character. Back in the day when Coronation Street wasn't complete rubbish like it… won't be for at least another ten years. "Are Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds real too?"

_All hands brace for impact! Massive Nostalgia Trip Incoming!_ I fucking LOVED that show. "That one's just a bit real. There was a real man called D'Artagnan, and he was a musketeer, and there's a famous story about him called D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers. For the telly they made a children's version where they're all dogs instead of men and changed the name to Dogtanian because it was all dogs, and muskehounds instead of musketeers."

"Oh. What's a musketeer?"

"Old fashioned kind of soldiers. Named after the kind of gun they used, but they were famous for using their swords as well."

"Why did they use swords instead of guns?"

And we're off! I really can't do much for Harry except talk to him, and five minutes with any five year old will make you familiar with the phenomenon. Question after question after question until you go mad or the kid gets bored and wanders off. Of course, after the first time you're already mad and the whole process becomes rather fun, especially if you've got time to demonstrate the holy rite of Looking It Up In Books for the stuff you don't know the answer to.

Of course, the kid has to be comfortable with you and not have had the habit squashed out of him by years of psychological abuse. Seems like I got to Harry in time. What actually stops us this time is the sound of feet coming up the driveway and a key in the lock, right as Harry's in the middle of the important follow-up questions for the explanation of how special telly science can make it look like dogs can talk and fight and foil the evil schemes of the sinister Cardinal Richelieu.

Harry freezes mid-inquiry. He'd been getting quite voluble.

"Don't worry, Harry. She can't hear me and she won't have heard you. What happens now?"

"I get lunch and I'm allowed the loo and I have to do jobs until it's time to go and get Dudley from the childminder."

"Well, eat your lunch and do your jobs and we can talk more. Maybe I can tell you things about your jobs, you just have to pretend you can't hear me." I hear feet on the stairs above us, Petunia clearly needs the loo urgently judging by the pace.

"Sometimes I forget stuff and she shouts at me and I get the slipper," Harry says. The tone of his voice would make a statue weep. Sounds like something my own dear mother got up to: give incomplete instructions, or instructions no child can manage to grasp, and punish the slightest infraction. Of _course_ Harry got right aboard the whole friendly-ghost bit, it was a distraction from what he knew was coming.

"I'll remember for you, let's avoid the slipper. The slipper is _stupid_, but don't say that out loud, you'll just get more slipper." I've no great hope that I can cheer him up, I have a deep-seated dread that even adult memory and attention to detail won't be good enough, but maybe I can help him get his mind right to take a little less damage to his s oul from what's (probably, I could be running in fear of my own personal ghosts here) coming.

"K." The key turns in the lock and Harry's visibly retreating into himself as I watch. I wasn't being pessimistic, I wasn't being pessimistic _enough_.

\- oOo -

It was as bad as I feared and in some ways worse: after another bread-and-marge meal on the kitchen floor, Petunia snapped orders and stood over Harry while he damp-dusted and swept and mopped and made beds and all of the other sundry and minor tasks of regular housework for two hours. He's not big enough for the vacuum cleaner or cooking yet, and either there's nothing to do in the garden or she doesn't want the neighbours to see him. She'd have to give him shoes and something to wear that isn't pyjamas, too.

The standing-over is the worst part for Harry, constantly carping about how he's not doing the job well enough or quickly enough and how he's a worthless, stupid freak. It's _calculated_ to put him off his stroke and give her an excuse to use the slipper on him.

And she wants to. Oh, she very clearly wants to. She's put on a housework apron with a big pocket in the front, and there's a nice, big rubber-soled slipper in it.

"Just let her words go, Harry. She's a sad, angry woman who doesn't know any better. Keep your eyes on the job, nice, smooth even strokes with the cloth. Now get a bit of the cloth over your finger and get in the corners. Keep going until you've got all the dust, I know you can't see too well, but I can and I'll talk you through it. Back up a bit, you've missed a bit, bit more, got it. The important thing is that you know and I know we're doing a good job, and a good job is worth doing. Don't look around, pretend you can't hear me, she's telling you it's the dining room next, move smoothly and evenly and don't be afraid..." Just a sample of what I pour into his ear. I hope it's helping.

If I had a throat it'd be sore, but we manage a success on our first day together: Harry doesn't get the slipper. What he does get is two hours of intimidation from a woman armed with something he _knows_ will hurt when she hits him with it. Constantly in his personal space, every utterance from her mouth an insult or a criticism couched in the vilest terms she can think of that doesn't teach him coarse language, and demanding the kind of standards they enforce on basic trainees to accustom them to military harshness. Demanding these standards from a child with defective vision who, up until now, has been unable to see what he's supposed to be wiping up.

At no point does she do anything actionable before a criminal court. While inflicting two hours of emotional and psychological torture of the nastiest kind. In a dark, sarcastic, gallows-humour sort of way I'm actually impressed. Our 'success' is measured by her being satisfied by Harry's eyes brimming with tears as she pokes and prods him to be faster drinking a glass of water, using the loo and getting back into his cage.

It takes me the best part of an hour of patient, gentle reassurance to get him back on an even keel and reassure him that this is Not Right, that it is _all_ Vernon and Petunia's fault, that his mum and dad would be right here haunting the _shit_ out of them if they could, and that one day all this will be past. It stops us taking advantage of Petunia heading out to collect Dudley, which takes the better part of an hour, but I can't begrudge the time. There's a lot of damage to undo.

Forget what I said about Petunia being less culpable, her only difference from Vernon is her preferred approach. Insidious, rather than brutal, but every bit as barbaric. One way or another, her and her pet manatee are going fucking _down_. Made my peace with my own lack of vengeance years ago. Taking it on someone else's behalf? I foresee _catharsis_.

When I figure out the how of the thing, well: _Lily sends her regards, you utter, utter cunt_.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

The Green Form: part of the old Legal Aid. A _very_ mild means test entitled anyone to two hours of lawyers' time paid for out of general taxation for 'general advice and assistance on any matter of law'. It got cut down to near non-existence while I was still a lawyer and I'm pretty sure it's gone altogether now.

Harry not getting his reception year at school actually complies with the law, which requires a child be in full time education from the first term after his fifth birthday. It isn't actually from canon that the Dursleys went with the bare legal minimum but is precisely the kind of petty bullshit you'd expect from the sort of arseholes who'd keep a child in a cupboard and tell the neighbours he's a habitual criminal.

The Black Dog of folklore - including Gr im, Barghest, Gurt Dog, Old Padfoot and many more in Britain alone, it's very widespread across Europe - gets a bad press that, reading between the lines, they don't deserve. Guard dogs are notoriously grumpy creatures, after all, with people who aren't supposed to be there, but you're glad of them if they're guarding _you_.

Other matters: Grilled Tomato on a Full English is garnish, and should not be eaten. The Teasmade is an alarm clock with a built in tea-maker: rather out of fashion now, but surprisingly they still make and sell them. I really do miss the milkmen of old, it was an enormously convenient service that got driven out of business by the big supermarkets. The best picturesque name I ever found was in the churchyard of St. Andrew's at Slaidburn, where a Mr. Tempest Strider was buried in 1788. And it's completely true about the electric goddesses, rape-monkeys (Sodomit-Affelingen in the original german) and meth.

Fic recommendation: Messing with Time by Slythernim, on Archive of Our Own, which recently updated after a long hiatus. Harry ends up five again, with a thirty-something Auror's mind and skillset. He puts up with the Dursleys' bullshit for about fifteen minutes and then shit goes _sideways _in the most entertaining way.


	3. It's worse than I thought

Disclaimer: Do children turn out articulate and capable of social functioning after ten dark and difficult years of regular solitary confinement and social isolation? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I've settled on Fridays as being upload day. Which is why you're getting chapter 3 so quickly. Current buffer: 6 chapters after this one.

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Chapter 3

_Forget what I said about Petunia being less culpable, her only difference from Vernon is her preferred approach. Insidious, rather than brutal, but every bit as barbaric. One way or another, her and her pet manatee are going fucking down. Made my peace with my own lack of vengeance years ago. Taking it on someone else's behalf? I foresee catharsis. _

_When I figure out the how of the thing, well: _Lily sends her regards, you utter, utter cunt.

_-oOo-_

I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening - interrupted by Harry's bowl of leftovers and plate-scrapings, actually enough for a decent meal to my surprise - just chatting with him. I'm careful not to mention magic to him - he's an abused kid, if he starts to hate his magic there may be serious consequences. I say 'may' because Obscurials were only in the movies, and they are pretty obviously a slightly different universe to the books.

And, obviously, my presence means that this universe is a slightly different one to either. I can't take anything for granted, and there's another good reason to manage the release of information to the poor kid: he's _already_ overwhelmed. His contact with other humans consists of Petunia's torments, his Uncle's occasional bellowing, virtually nothing from Dudley, and what he can hear from the television through at least one closed door and more often two.

We get a pleasant couple of hours out of the telly. Dudley comes home from the childminder, is fussed over by his mother, and parks his malnourished - overnutrition can be and in this case is as bad as underfeeding - arse in front of Childrens' BBC. Harry presses his ear to the cupboard door and I supply a running commentary on TV shows I haven't seen in thirty-five years.

True to type, Newsround and Think of a Number see Dudley get up and go pester his mother for snacks. I sneak a peek and see that he's got chocolate rolls and monster munch - roast beef flavour, when even a fool like him ought to know that the pickled onion ones were best - to fortify himself against even the slightest possibility of learning anything. Harry, on the other hand, takes an utter delight in both shows. Newsround, because it tells him there's a wider world he can escape to one day when he's a grown-up, and Think of a Number because Johnny Ball is a living avatar of the gods of enthusiasm and curiosity and Harry is determined not to be a complete _lump_ like Dudley.

Oh, he doesn't say as much, but even at five he can tell there's something wrong with his cousin - I'm taking his word for it, the books show us Dudley as a toddler and as a much older little shit with criminal tendencies, I've seen very little of him myself - and has got hold of the idea that he doesn't want to be like that because Aunt Petunia likes him and she's horrible so whatever she likes must be horrible too. Bloody good reasoning for a five-year-old in solitary confinement, and I compliment him accordingly.

"What you've got to remember, though, Harry, is that Dudley has been made that way by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. They're trying to make him grow up to be as horrible and stupid as they are. It's not his fault, and maybe we can help him be better if we can think up a way to do it."

"Why?" Harry's not distracted by the telly at the moment, the BBC is running house trails, so he has a moment to sink his teeth into _the_ big question of moral philosophy.

"There's lots of reasons to do the right thing, Harry. Sometimes it's one reason, sometimes it's the other. But mostly because it's nice to look at people who are all stupid and wrong and think _Ha! I'm not like those people._ I'm making it nice and simple for you while you're just learning, we'll get on to the cleverer stuff later when you've learned enough to understand."

"Like when I'm six?"

"Like when you're six. And then, even more when you're seven. And more still when you're eight. Always be learning if you can, it's always useful. Did you like Think of a Number?"

"Yeah. I want to see what he's talking about though." Wistful, rather than whining.

"Oh, yes. It would help a lot, Mr. Ball shows much more than he tells. Did it help that I was explaining stuff as he went along?"

"Bit. Oh! Dogtanian's starting!" Science and Maths and Education and like that there are going to have to wait: Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds are _important_.

I, of course, quite agree, and I'm pleased to note that even after literal decades I can still remember the words of the theme song. Muskehounds are _still_ always ready. Harry's practically insensible with silent, wheezing laughter. He manages to choke out that he didn't know grown-ups could be silly.

"I am _quite_ serious, young Harry. There's nothing silly about being a Muskehound."

More giggles, and then we both go quiet to listen _most_ carefully to this week's episode. Unlike Harry, I get to see what's on screen for a bit when I ghost in to the living room and check the Radio Times on the coffee table. This is on in Blue Peter's time-slot, which I'm a bit disappointed by since I was looking forward to that, most of the segments were educational and would spark Harry's curiosity. I'd quite forgotten that it went off the air over the summer holidays.

I've been gone maybe ten seconds and get back to discover that Harry had _noticed I was gone_. I don't know if it's a significant change, because I think this is the first time I've left his presence while he's been awake.

"Where did you go?"

"Into the living room to look at the Radio Times."

"What's the Ra-di-o-Times?" he asks, enunciating the unfamiliar words carefully.

"It's a paper with all the telly programmes written on it, the shiny one on the coffee table. I wanted to read what was on next."

"Can you read?"

"Yes I can. Want to learn how?"

"Cor, yeah!"

"We'll work on it next time Petunia goes out for long enough. Now, pay attention, Muskehound!"

"Yes, sir!"

I'm quite pleased that Harry is a fan: whoever wrote Dogtanian really put some thought into it, and it's chock full of great messages for little kids. Be helpful, have fun, find good friends and stick with them, I approve wholeheartedly. Unlike Dumas's original, which was probably a bit unwholesome even for 17th century France, what with all those duels being basically romanticised murder.

I do want to know how Harry knew I was gone, but we can work on that when we don't have telly to listen to. Nattering about what we hear from the goggle box is how we pass the time. Coronation Street in particular is a right nostalgic listen for me - Bet Lynch is having some teething troubles settling in as the manager of the Rovers Return, which prompts a lot of explaining about what a pub is, it had been baffling Harry up to now. That carries us through to dinnertime and the long couple of hours it takes Harry to wind down to sleep. The Dursleys are content with the Freak being quiet, it seems like.

-oOo-

Harry drops off just in time for me to catch the Nine O' Clock news and confirm that Vernon's mid-week drinking is actually a habit and last night wasn't just a one-off. Petunia has finished with her magazine and has a pulp romance to read. A closer look tells me it's _Riders_ by Jilly Cooper. Dated a girl who was into those books and read one myself, although where she found raciness and romance among the horsey set, I saw a whole bunch of entirely awful people who didn't get half the heartbreak, misery and STDs they deserved.

Enough with finding reasons to hold the Dursleys in contempt. Them being married is making two other people happier than they might otherwise be, after all. I've still got a lot of thinking to do about how to proceed: my resources here are my own mind and the (limited) physical and (non-existent) legal capabilities of a five year old. That puts a lot of barriers in our way.

Running away is a non-starter for the moment. Getting far enough away to be in a different county council's area and turning ourselves in to childrens' services would actually work provided Harry is careful to insist his name is freak and that he doesn't know where he lives. They'll issue him with a new name - Harry Potter can be his secret superhero identity or spy codename or something - and put him with properly-vetted foster parents. Trouble is, Harry can't get far as a little kid without the police being called. Lost children Harry's age draw attention, and the fact that he has neither proper clothes nor any kind of footwear would speed that reaction right up.

Reporting the matter to the proper authorities also won't work. The Dursleys, by accident or design and frankly I don't care which, stay _juuuust_ on the side of the line where the criminal law takes over. I had occasion, during therapy, to look up the law from this time and discovered that I - and by extension Harry - weren't _quite_ the victims of crime. The law's still as it was last amended in the 1930s, when the school-leaving age was 14 and a lot of kids were lucky they grew up at all. The law on corporal punishment hadn't been changed since the 19th century, when not sparing the rod lest they spoil the child was the watchword of parents everywhere. My dream of seeing them go down for historic offences against children shattered that day, and, I like to think, the healing began.

That leaves us with the county council's duty to intervene to help kids who are being neglected and abused through the civil side of child protection law. What Harry will get, if I can get anyone interested, is _maybe_ a brief visit from an overworked social worker who's had this tacked on the end of a long and exhausting list of far more urgent cases with children who've turned up in hospital with broken bones, and the sure knowledge that the nice house in the nice village with the nice car in the driveway will go a long way to keeping trouble from the door of the company director with the Old School Tie. That's assuming that the social worker doesn't immediately agree that any talk about the company director with the Old School Tie _must_ be malicious gossip and sorry to have bothered you Mr. Dursley.

I'm pretty sure Surrey County Council has been tory since the year dot, so social work will be right on the hind teat for funding. Even _if_ we manage to get a social worker with a bit of class consciousness and the will to actually fight for Harry, he's going to get triaged right off the radar. You really don't need some master manipulator in the background to make an abused child fall through the cracks in a system that can't guarantee they'll catch all the ones in danger of being beaten to death. Depressing, but true, and things will get a _lot_ worse for Harry if that happens. Petunia is still working on a grudge from before Harry was born, which will be a recurring theme in Harry's life, and Vernon's quite clearly a petty vindictive arsehole on only twenty-four hours' acquaintance.

Memo: find out how closely Dumbledore's woman is watching and if possible how much she's reporting. One of them's shirking their responsibilities and I want to know which. It'll be important later, I'm sure of it.

With escape and rescue out of the question, that leaves survival. Step one is in hand: don't provoke the menagerie. Vernon _could_ turn violent very easily, especially with a few drinks in him. Petunia's verbal and emotional violence is already well to the fore, she restrains the physical stuff to not enough to break the skin (yet: that non-stick aluminium frying pan in the kitchen may well have Harry's name on it if he fails to duck).

If they think that actually injuring the child is merited, though, it wouldn't even be remotely out of character. Even a brief loss of control would do it. So, keep the odd occurrences as under control as we can. If we can get Harry in command of his magic early and convince him to be sneaky about it, that'll help a _lot_. Even if we can't - and that might be a good thing, don't want anyone seeing uncomfortable parallels with Tom Riddle, after all - helping Harry to self-soothe and be at peace with the torment around him will do him good. Just knowing there's someone on his side, however powerless I might be, is going to help a _lot_. Reducing the accidental magic will be a helpful side effect.

Step two is teaching Harry early what I learned late: self-control, subterfuge and stealth. He's going to have to learn to steal food, exercise in secret and learn on the sly. Self-reliance is the downtrodden kid's friend: he's a quick learner and it _should_ only need a modest amount of guidance to keep it from turning into unhealthy coping mechanisms. Right? I can hope, anyway.

Step three _et sequelae_ is entirely up in the air for the time being. I'm aware that the names and addresses I've seen could still be a bizarre coincidence, and if we're talking parallel universes there could be one where J K Rowling wrote a series of books about a boy superhero whose superpowers have precisely jack to do with Hogwarts and magic. If I'm in one of _those_ then I'm as in the dark as Harry about what's going to happen.

The Dursleys turn in after the news finishes - the City news makes me think that it'd be good if we could get some of Harry's money out of Gringotts and ready for the bubbles I know are coming. Being able to cash out of the market the week before Black Monday - back half of October '87, as I recall - and take a shitload of short positions would be a good way to fill our boots. The reason I'm aware of this is that the early news of next year's big deregulation, the so-called Big Bang, was part of that City report. Pretty sure it counts as insider trading - it's a generously defined crime, after all - but let's see them prove prescience in court! Vernon gets the Financial Times delivered but I doubt he actually reads it. If I can convince Harry to learn to read out of the newspaper I can start getting my eye back in on the companies news.

Idle speculation is getting me nowhere. I'm not even properly planning, just blueskying general ideas. I resolve to do some more reconnaissance. A quick check that Harry's asleep and not having a nightmare - he's not, although his hair has fallen away from That Scar and I'm really not sure _what_ I'm supposed to do about that - and I'm away again.

I remember that a common theme in fanfics was Lily leaving a box of personal effects to her sister and it winding up shoved away in the loft and forgotten about until Harry can find it, learn about his heritage and become SuperHarry. I think it unlikely - surely Petunia would have said something as part of that half-arsed apology in the last book - but unlikely or not, I'm going to spend the five minutes it takes to check. Plus, any further intelligence as to what kind of world we're in and what kind of life Harry has coming will be welcome.

I start with the loft that is, at first, as dark as a yard up a pig's arse. Whatever I'm using for vision, though, I noticed last night that it adapts quite well to low light conditions and since it was full moon last night, the shadows got _really_ dark. There's some outside light coming in through an air brick in one of the gable ends, and that lets me see that what's stored up here is: bugger all. Header tank for the central heating and hot water - old fashioned type, remind Harry not to drink from the hot tap because occasionally squirrels, bats, pigeons and mice drown in those things and don't get found for years. Nothing else, not even loft insulation because Vernon's too bloody bone idle to even pick up the phone and get a couple of lads in. If Lily _did_ send anything to Petunia, it got binned. Or stored somewhere else.

It takes me half an hour to look in to every part of the house that even the smallest amount of light reaches and I don't find anything. There's a battered old shoebox shoved to the back of the top shelf of the fitted wardrobe in the master bedroom that might hold the promise of old, saved letters, but they're as likely to be billets-doux from Vernon during their courtship and more likely still to be other, less intelligence-rich mementoes. As soon as I can get Harry's nerve up to it we'll be checking that out all the same.

Out into the wide blue yonder, then. Up, out through the roof on a whim and a lark, and it occurs to me that maybe an aerial view might help. Or, more honestly, couldn't hurt and since I'm disembodied and floating free I might as well eke out what scraps of fun there are to be had. I get up to a hundred metres or so - fear of heights left behind with the mortal coil that could be hurt by the fall - and take a moment to look around.

And, well, _would you look at that_. An owl. Common barn owl, _Tyto alba._ Watching them hunt is one of the great pleasures of a quiet stroll at night in the summer. Quite surprising to see one at this altitude, they take their prey from the ground and seldom go above treetop height. It's flying a lazy circle, so I watch in the hope of seeing it stoop. It takes a second or two, but I finally spot that it's wearing jesses. Which makes me think at first that it's someone's falconry bird, until I spot the small scroll tied in the jesses. It's a messenger bird!

Well, if I wasn't sure that Harry was a wizard, I am now. Who's this owl delivering to? If I've got another magical in the neighbourhood I want to know about it. No such luck, however. It circles a few more times and then heads off westward faster than I can follow. Letter for Harry that couldn't get past Dumbledore's protective spells? Possibly. It's certainly improbable that from '81 to '91 he didn't even get fan-mail, after all. I can't even fault Dumbledore for the precaution in a world where hate-mail can and does try and kill or maim the recipient. I file it away for future consideration.

From up here I can see the rich glow of night-time London to the north east, another larger small town along the road past the primary school, and the rest of Surrey all around. The moon's a night past full in clear skies so it's all beautifully lit. It looks like there's a new housing estate, or a second phase of the one we're on, being put in between Little Whinging and the school, and it looks like there's going to be a playground as part of it. They're just breaking ground on another bit on the other side of the main road, by the looks. Hopefully they include some more shops, because as things stand Little Whinging is coming up a bit short in the old amenities department and won't cope at all when it doubles in size - the new housing estate is if anything slightly larger than the one the Dursleys live on - over the next couple of years.

I peg the railway station as in the big village up the road, mostly by spotting the late service stopping there. Bog standard two tracks, two platforms and a ticket machine sort of place - are automated ticket machines a thing yet? - that missed the Beeching Axe by the skin of its teeth. Or, more likely, its utility to commuting City suits. Have to go take a look at the posted timetables at some point, find out where Harry can get to from there. Once I've got him alongside raiding Vernon's wallet, that is.

Have to be careful about that last, of course. I take the view that Harry is stranded in enemy territory and is quite justified in looting enemy supplies to survive and escape. It's certainly how I felt about the worse bits of my own childhood, after all. I'm confident Harry is bright enough to understand that the rules change as between 'dealing with enemies' and 'dealing with friends and everyone else'. The Dursleys are trying to destroy him, which makes them his enemies, and _inter arma enim silent leges_ after all. Striking back in small ways will help him resist and develop skills and confidences we can fondly hope he'll never need again.

I spend a couple of hours up in the sky, spinning my mental wheels. I end up with quite a long list of Stuff I Need To Find Out, ranging from the state of Harry's inclusion in the non-magical side of things to whether or not I can get in to Diagon Alley, where I can experiment with my interactions with wizards and witches. A lot of possible plans - some of them, sad to say, cribbed from fanfiction - are heavily dependent on getting information about magic and the magical world. There's going to be a powerful lot of waiting and surviving for Harry.

If I want information about the magical world, there's only one possible repository of it in reasonable spooking distance. That I know about, at any rate. Arabella Figg's house on Wisteria walk. Positives: she's a named character in the books, sympathetic to Harry, has a link to the magical world, and isn't a full-blown witch who might have magical defences against the likes of me. Negatives: she's an agent of Dumbledore's, so he might well have left defences there, her sympathy for Harry didn't extend to actually telling him who his parents were and what he himself was, and she doesn't just have cats, she has part-magical cats. Who can definitely see me and might raise an alarm.

Of course, if I make enough of a fuss to get Dumbledore to visit Little Whinging I can watch how he reacts. It won't tell me _much_ about the man's character, but it'll be more than I know now. The downside risk, of course, is that Dumbledore learns about me and does something effective to keep me from helping Harry. Doubtless with the very best of intentions, but he paves himself a fine road with _those_ through the course of the books. Thing is, I know I came down on the other side of this decision only the night before, but the ensuing time has impressed me with an urgent need to do something. _Anything_. To keep my own conscience quiet, at the very least. I've mocked the Politician's Syllogism - Something must be done, this is Something, Therefore it Must Be Done - in my past life, but here I am doing it. In my defence, the risk is low - one wizard has something of a sense of whether I'm right next to him or not but can't see me and the only entities that can _actually_ see me can't speak english. Unless there's a charm for talking to part-kneazles, which might be the case because I seem to recall Sirius Black getting on famously with Crookshanks during Prisoner of Azkaban.

All this musing brings me to ground level at the end of Wisteria Walk - like Privet Drive, a cul-de-sac, albeit a longer one with a mixture of smaller house designs and bungalows - and the problem of figuring out which of these is the home of the local crazy old cat lady.

I immediately realise that this is harder than it looks. Obviously, Statute of Secrecy being what it is, I can't just go looking for Fanged Geraniums - whatever they look like - among the bedding plants around the lawn. The back gardens might hold more promise of that sort of thing, although if I were a wizard in a muggle neighbourhood I'd put up a greenhouse, with year-round shading paint for privacy. The cats would help, at least until I can discern which of the cat ladies - there's never just _one_ \- are muggles and which the squib, but I can't count on them being conveniently arrayed outside their house or indeed conveniently anywhere, because cats. I can't even count entirely on Ms. Figg being actually _old_: someone who's impossibly ancient through a five-year-old's eyes could well be in prime dating range for a man my age. The only other thing I can think of - the powerful smell of cabbage in her house - is no use because I don't have a sense of smell right now.

I start with a simple cull of the available candidates: eliminate all the houses with cars from consideration. I'm probably leaping to conclusions, here, but someone close to the magical world has options like the Floo and the Knight Bus for getting around that are cheaper and nearly as convenient as owning a car, even in these days before fuel and insurance prices went up to silly levels. Of the few homes left, I decide to investigate the bungalows first as being the more economical option for a woman living alone.

Eliminate all the ones with kids' toys anywhere visible, and we're down to four. Of which one has a great big dog kenneled in the back garden and one is unoccupied with an estate agent's board outside telling me it's sold subject to contract. The other two have single women in residence, both tucked up for the night but only one with great big moggies on every available surface. Four cats are sharing her bed with her, and there must be at least a dozen in the house. Wouldn't remotely surprise me if the cabbage was kept on the boil to cover up the stench of overloaded litter trays: it turns out Kneazle crosses are hefty beasts and it'd be no surprise if their droppings were equally burdensome.

Inside, my presence isn't enough to disturb the felines from their repose beyond an occasional flick of the ear. Which is good news. Less good is that a quick scout through everything but the single bedroom - I'm squeamish about any more invasion of privacy than I need to confirm she's asleep - shows no obvious sign of magical paraphernalia or literature: the small bookcase in the living room is stuffed full of books on cat breeding and care with a couple of Geoffrey Archer novels for that essential touch of the Dark Side.

I track back to the dining-kitchen, where I saw the household correspondence stacked on the dining table. The top item is the household rates bill, addressed to 'The Occupier', which isn't a lot of use. Fortunately, there's a houseful of cats to take the blame for what I'm about to do. Concentrated effort makes the top sheet slide off and over the edge of the table, revealing an uncashed Unemployment Benefit giro. Next item down is one for Housing Benefit. Both are made out to a Mrs. A. Figg. Jackpot! The rest of the paperwork relates to gas, water and electricity - privatisation hasn't happened yet, so I'm in for the bloody annoying "If you see Sid" adverts all over again - and a blurry mimeographed newsletter from a cat fanciers and breeders club. No telephone bill, alas, and I don't recall seeing one in the hall. Not that itemised bills are a thing yet, I'm pretty sure most of the country is still making calls through mechanical exchanges, but someone who spent a lot of time on the phone might be worth eavesdropping on.

Clearly she's living on the purely muggle economy, and I sincerely hope she's worked enough on the non-magical side to have made National Insurance contributions to cover the benefits she's getting. I'm a little surprised to learn that she's renting, here, since the whole buy-to-rent fad is at least a decade away and I'm pretty sure this isn't a council house. Not actually an important matter: I've found the right house and I can keep an eye on things even if there's no useful intelligence here.

I pause to consider looking in the bedroom in more detail. As a private space it might hold more promise of interesting finds. And then I realise: _single bedroom_? Nobody builds single bedroom houses, and I'm pretty sure they didn't back in the eighties either. Single bedroom _flats,_ sure, and bedsits are still a thing at this time, but even the pokiest bungalow merits two bedrooms. In the hallway, I see that there's a book case doing duty as a display case for old-lady knick-knacks, mostly photographs of cats, cat-show trophies, and sculpture of a generally feline theme. What it's also doing is standing right where a door would be if there was one to a part of the house I've not actually been in.

Either I need to get much more used to just gliding straight through walls - going between rooms via the doors is the literal habit of a lifetime - or this house has been somehow set up to divert attention to the fact that it has a fourth room. It's possible to do this sort of thing non-magically, it's how priest holes in old houses worked.

Ghosting through the shelves I find myself in the second bedroom. Which looks a lot more like a storeroom than someone's secret spy lair, to be frank, but there's a bound set of KwikSpell course material (clearly Filch isn't the only one bitter about being a squib) on a cheap-looking flatpack desk next to a mirror-looking thing that's stood there like the family photo one might have on one's desk at work. There's also a box full of parchment scrolls which I don't disturb because I won't be able to put them back. On the opposite wall to the dresser there's a dresser racked with bottles and jars bearing handwritten labels. Potions and ingredients, all of them, although some could sit on open display in the kitchen without compromising secrecy. I can think of several places in the muggle world that sell dried Feverfew and Skullcap, for instance. The large jar of pickled frogs is better off hidden in either world, of course. Frogs are unfortunate-looking beasts at the best of times and the pickling process has done nothing to improve them.

Also on the dresser is a fairly thick volume with 'Cat Remedies For The Home Brewer' neatly lettered on the spine. Everything else in the room is neatly packed in cardboard boxes, and I'm about to leave when I spot movement in the mirror-thingy. A closer look shows me that the words 'Foe Glass' are lettered on the frame, and the movement I caught was, well, me. It seems that by whatever standard this thing was enchanted to work on, I count as inimical to Arabella Figg. Fair's fair, I _am_ trespassing in her home and spying on her. It's also possible that it just works as a straight-up mirror for supernatural entities. Whether it's a feature of the glass or a result of my new status I look like your classic movie-issue ghost, all monochrome and translucent. I feel sure that my hair and beard would be all floaty if they were longer than the number-two buzzcut I favour. The injuries I died of aren't in evidence though, so I'm not your Potterverse-style ghost with eg. a semi-detached head. You can, however, tell I died in dire need of a shave.

What have we learned? Arabella Figg is, while not a witch, witch-adjacent. Between the Dursleys, the owl, Ms. Figg, and the definitely-Potterverse magic item, the coincidences are stacked up far too high for this to be anything other than the Harry Potter 'verse (although I can't rule out one of the fanfiction variations, nor for that matter canon from a universe not my own, but other than being alert for differences from what I remember there's nothing to be done about that.) Mrs. Figg is there, I can assume, to report on Harry, with orders from Dumbledore - as she tells Harry later - not to say anything to him about the magical world. Kind of see the point of that one: I've not been forthcoming myself, although I'm not such an idiot as to see it as more than a temporary measure. With a bit of advice from me, Harry should be able to talk her into doing things a lot better than she did in the books. Nothing else, if Harry assures her he'll tell the Dursleys he hates it at her house, she can be a better host and he can get sent here more often. Slip her the suggestion to crack on that she finds Harry useful for mucking out the litter trays and Petunia might actually pay her as a childminder on the regular.  
And, of course, if Harry hints that his Aunt Petunia has let slip that her sister was a witch, dear batty old Arabella might think it's all right to open up a bit herself. Nothing else, it might get Dumbledore here without any suspicion of wandering spirits about the place. I know I'm on Harry's side, but that's not obvious to third parties and no way to prove it either.

-oOo-

I beat the milkman back to Number Four this time, and go straight in to check on Harry. He's curled up on his side, hands tucked in to his chest for warmth, and frowning in his sleep. If he's dreaming, I see no sign, but I hear the boiler fire up at five so it should get warmer in here soon. I move in close to the famous scar to see what it's like. Lightning-bolt shaped, a sowilo rune if ever I saw one. I never paid much attention to the folklore that goes with them: I'm aware there's a rune-poem for each one but never did more than skim the wikipedia page once and chuckle over the fact that most known rune inscriptions are norse graffiti and say things like "Halfdan was here" and "Ragnar loves cock".

It's the rune of the sun, I remember that much, the conqueror of darkness. If, as anyone with an ounce of sense might surmise, Voldemort's destruction was wrought by Harry's parents, that rune is a Clue. Thinking about it, they might not have needed to be wholly successful either. By the time he went to Godric's Hollow, Tom Riddle had practically used the entire corpus of world folklore as a checklist for how to piss off the powers that be.

Taking on faith that my experience with the Moirai was genuine and that their rules apply, Tom was a kin-slayer, had violated guest-right, styled himself a lord outwith the service of an anointed king, and forsaken even that shaky claim to lordship by standing forsworn to at least one of his liegemen if not more. He lacked only dancing on a mountaintop wearing a pointy copper hat in a thunderstorm in the 'asking for it' stakes, because if the Fates are real, so are the … let's exercise appropriate caution and refer to them as The Kindly Ones. If the Potters' hopeless last ditch defence and surrender of their own lives in sacrifice was part of some subtly-enacted ritual magic, Voldemort had made himself a perfect target for it.

Of course, if he gets around to drinking Unicorn blood in a few years' time, that mountaintop dance will be accompanied by a chant of "all gods are bastards." I'm not just yarning, here: Voldemort's tragic flaws and inevitable fall follow an ages-old pattern followed by storytellers back to the neolithic age. In a universe where there are actual entities _enforcing_ those rules and well documented as doing so over literal millennia? Acting like Tom did goes beyond hubris and well into "what an idiot" territory.

I watch over Harry, generally thinking over the things I've learned and how they fit in to my understanding of the story he has ahead of him, while the house warms up around us. I can't feel it, of course - still dead, thanks for asking - but I watch Harry slowly unclench as he no longer has to huddle against low temperatures. I hope he's had a blanket or something during the winter - this is the height of summer, when it only gets uncomfortably cool at night - but I wouldn't care to bet much on it.

It occurs to me that while I now know a great deal about Arabella Figg's household finances, I haven't had a nosey into the Dursleys. Learning whether or not they're claiming Child Benefit for Harry would certainly be interesting. I'm still not sure whether they've made Harry's presence here in any way official. I can't recall seeing any paperwork left out where I can read it, but it won't be too hard to monitor the incoming post to see what's what in that department.

The day begins just like yesterday did, except that, as I learn over breakfast, Dudley is not off to the childminder today. It seems that she doesn't do Fridays during school holidays, how very dare she, and this on top of what she charges. (The figure Petunia names is entirely reasonable, doubly so for a problem child like Dudley.)

_Well, you could actually try caring for your misbehaving little fleshlump yourself, Petunia,_ I think, _but I suspect that dealing with the consequences of your own actions is a touch beyond you_. I don't think I'm too jaundiced by her treatment of Harry when I note that literally the only part of her life that isn't her own fault is her sister being a witch. It was her choice how she handled that, and all her choices from from that day to this. On which she's sitting married to Vernon as he commits slow suicide by cholesterol while not enjoying her meagre breakfast - I'm pretty sure the kid she hates gets nearly as many calories of a morning as she serves herself.

Deciding I don't want to hear any of Vernon's self-important announcements of what he's going to achieve today in the big wide world of drill sales management, I go back in to Harry's Secret Base. "Looks like Dudley's staying at home today. Does that mean we get to stay in here?"

"Think so," Harry replies, squished in to the corner and hugging his knees. He doesn't seem too unhappy about it.

"Does Dudley get to play outside yet?" I can but hope. I'm a bit hazy on the age kids get let (or chucked, as I was) out to play unsupervised in the 80s. Certainly the approach most parents took in the 70s would shock parents of the 20-teens with the lack of supervision in evidence. Not that I'm complaining, the longer I stayed outdoors the less time I spent getting walloped for reasons I didn't - still don't - understand.

"Sometimes," Harry says, but he doesn't sound sure. I suppose I can't expect a kid his age to be keeping mental notes and spotting patterns of behaviour, although he will develop the skill earlier than other kids will.

"Doesn't much matter, really," I say, "I was asking to try and guess what's going to be on the telly."

"Dudley's allowed to watch ITV when Uncle Vernon's out at work. Aunt Petunia says he's not allowed to tell Uncle Vernon he's not watching BBC programmes," Harry informs me with the gleeful air of being allowed to grass someone up without consequences.

"Is he now?" I say, getting in on the conspiracy, "Does Uncle Vernon know that Coronation Street isn't on the BBC?" I'm actually a bit surprised by this revelation: I thought I was the only one who grew up in a household where the controlling bullshit extended to which channels were considered 'proper'.

"Prob'ly," Harry says, "but Aunt Petunia shouts if he tries to turn it off." Harry's fascination with the show may just have an explanation beyond enjoying the story.

"I'll bet she does. What else does she shout at Uncle Vernon about?" I'm not hopeful that Harry has any particular recollection. At his age, grownups having a row is like having Godzilla and King Kong fighting outside your house; you don't know what it's about and wouldn't care if you did, you're just terrified the violence is going to drop on you at some point. Because sooner or later, it usually does.

Harry just shrugs. Just as I thought.

"So, we've got a whole day to sit and talk. Well, I'll talk and you'll whisper, because we don't want _them_ to hear. What do you want to talk about?"

"Can… can you tell me about my mum and dad?"

I'd sort of hoped to get started on educating the kid. You know, counting, times tables, the sounds of the letters and the alphabet song since he'd mentioned hearing Sesame Street on the telly. There are however, as he has just reminded me, _priorities._ I'm going to have to edit things a bit. Well, a lot; I can get away with a mention of magic or two here and there to set the scene for the big reveal later, but most of the meat of the story is going to have to be in general terms. I think a bit about that and decide that my conscience can only take it if I'm up front about what I'm doing.

"I certainly can, but I want you to understand something first. So I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say and tell me what you understand about what I've told you. Can you do that for me?"

Fervent nodding. It's not terribly fair: I suspect he'd agree to _anything_ as the price of knowing about his real mummy and daddy. Still, if I just dump magic and everything on him straight away it'll hurt him terribly. And I have _no idea_ what the limits of accidental magic might or might not be, and whether or not an obscurus is even a theoretical possibility because they didn't turn up until the Fantastic Beasts movie, and I'm not taking risks with the health and safety of any child, never mind one this vulnerable.

"Well, first of all, I'm not going to tell you all of the story. Some of it will have to wait until you're all grown up. There are some things it isn't good for children to know, and some things it's against the rules, very good rules, for children to know. Some of it will have to wait until you're a bit older, because it's stuff that older children can know but not children who are five."

"So you can tell me when I'm six?" Attaboy. Negotiate: it gets you things and makes 'em argue for everything they want to keep from you.

"Yes! Some of it when you're six, some of it when you're seven…" I give him an opening

"And some of it when I'm eight!" he says the last word out loud and then slaps both hands over his mouth, having spoken in a normal indoor voice in his excitement.

"Well done! I can see we're going to do well teaching you your numbers, Harry. " And inductive reasoning and extrapolation, but you don't need to know the names for those things to do them. "What's more, I'm not going to tell you everything all today. We've got a lot of time to sit and talk, so we're going to take our time. Remember how eating all that food yesterday made you need the loo?"

Nod nod nodnodnod.

"It's a bit like that with big stories that make you happy and sad and excited and afraid. You have to take them bit by bit so you remember the happy parts and use them to make the sad parts better, and remember the exciting parts and use them to make the scary parts a bit more fun." There you go: pacing in storytelling, distilled for pre-schoolers. "Do you think you can explain that back to me in your own words?"

There's a long pause, garnished with the serious frown of a little boy thinking Very Hard Indeed. "You're gonna tell me the bits of the story that are all right for little kids, and tell it slowly so, uh, it doesn't make me poo?"

"Oh, close, very well done. You got the bit about the parts for little kids right, but it's so it doesn't make your feelings go all pooey. Not about actually making you poo."

Much giggling. Poo is the funniest thing ever, of course. Knowing _that_ is half the battle when keeping small children engaged and entertained.

"So, are you okay with me telling you the story a bit at a time like that? With not getting everything all at once? I want it to be good for you, you see."

The "yes" I get is tiny and quiet and comes with big, shiny eyes. You really don't have to show this kid much of any kind of concern to be the best grown-up he's ever met.

"Well, a long time ago, before you were born, James Potter and Lily Evans got on a train to go to a special school, all the way up north in Scotland. Your Aunt Petunia couldn't go to the same school, because she didn't pass the test to get in like your mum Lily did, and so she has been jealous and angry ever since. Now, on the train, they met and at first they didn't get on..."

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

I'm going to admit I had a lot of fun digging through youtube for kids' television from 1985 that I have fond memories of, and yes, I really did still remember the theme song from Dogtanian well enough to sing along after all these years.

The bit about investments: Qualifying as a solicitor includes getting certified as a Financial Adviser: passed mine in either late '95 or '96. You don't actually need _much_ future knowledge to figure out how the markets are going to react, and a major price correction like Black Monday of October '87 leaves the bear investors farting through silk. Knowing the movements of individual companies helps, of course, but you can do pretty well with nothing but futures and derivatives and tracker funds if you know the big events and how markets react to them. A lot of time-travel fanfics really overcomplicate that part, if they get into it at all.

The musings about Voldemort's self-sabotage are drawn from a generalist-hobbyist's understanding of the study of folklore and mythology. It's a fascinating field of study, and I've long wished I had the time and budget to dive deeper into it. JKR could only have made her villain's fall more folkloric by giving him a ritual triple death and burying him, unmarked, in a peat bog. (The fact that she got the 'sacrifice' aspect of Harry's walk into the woods subtly wrong we can chalk up to the fact that, as a victim of her own success, she ended up having to rush the last two books to market.)

Fanfic recommendation: Delenda Est by Lord Silvere, only on FFN as far as I'm aware. One of the classics of HP Fanfic, time travel means the Dursleys never raise Harry, but you do get to see them treated to a modest amount of hilarity which they would, in another life, have richly deserved.


	4. Like we didn't have enough to deal with

Disclaimer: Is the Dursleys' behaviour consistent with someone prevailing on them to tell Harry nothing about magic just as Arabella Figg was ordered to by Dumbledore? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

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Chapter 4

"_So, are you okay with me telling you the story a bit at a time like that? With not getting everything all at once? I want it to be good for you, you see."_

_The "yes" I get is tiny and quiet and comes with big, shiny eyes. You really don't have to show this kid much of any kind of concern to be the best grown-up he's ever met._

"_Well, a long time ago, before you were born, James Potter and Lily Evans got on a train to go to a special school, all the way up north in Scotland. Your Aunt Petunia couldn't go to the same school, because she didn't pass the test to get in like your mum Lily did, and so she has been jealous and angry ever since. Now, on the train, they met and at first they didn't get on..."_

-oOo-

Telling Harry the story - editing heavily to keep magic out of the picture and imparting important lessons about being polite, thinking before you speak, and paying attention and working hard at school - takes us up until the kiddies' programmes come on, whereupon we take a break. Fortunately Petunia seems to be unable to multitask when it comes to being an absolute failure as a mother: with Dudley at home all day she does her own housework and spends her free time feeding the little bugger into an early grave. Harry is let out every hour or so to use the loo, with no other interaction permitted other than the standard bread-and-marge feeding at lunchtime. I can only guess at the motivation: not wanting precious Diddydums to see Mummy letting her inner bitch out to play? Doesn't want her darling Duddikins to catch magic off The Freak? I really don't care. Harry and I are left undisturbed and that's the important thing.

Even with the entire morning and half the afternoon, I don't get much past the middle of his parents' time at school, digressing a lot as Harry has questions about _everything_ and likes that I never tell him off for asking and - I really have got nothing better to do on account of being dead and all - actually enjoy answering.

Sometimes I give him the choice between the serious answer and the silly answer: he always asks for the silly answer first and then the sensible answer second. As we go on he gets adventurous and asks for silly sensible answers and sensible silly answers, which I tell him is brilliant because it is. Taking a new concept and playing with it like that? There are _adults_ that don't have that kind of mental dexterity. The Dursleys won't be stamping that out without a fight from me. I'd say over my dead body, but that ship, what with the time travel, won't be sailing for another thirty-odd years.

I just straight up _tell_ Harry we're taking a break to listen to the telly, and that after dinner I'll be telling a story just for fun to take us through to bedtime. I mean to wait for him to ask for more before I talk about his parents again; it's going to have to be rationed out carefully because I straight up don't know that much. Harry is okay with that. I _hope_ it's because he doesn't want to risk me saying no, but it could just be because he's had obedience bullied into him.

The Friday afternoon children's television schedule is very different from when I was Harry's age, which was ten years ago from where we are in history. Not only has Crackerjack apparently gone off the air, I remember almost _none_ of these programmes. The exceptions are Play School, Jackanory and Newsround, but the first two are older than I am and Newsround was still going in 2019. I'm fairly sure that Live from the Broom Cupboard and Neighbours start about this time, but clearly not yet. Assuming they're not lost as differences from my home universe, because apparently this one has a TV personality called The Great Humberto and who the fuck _he _is, well, I haven't a bull's notion. If I remember rightly Dudley's a fan in six years' time, so he might not be on yet and when he is he'll probably be bloody dire and unfunny into the bargain. If you funded a five year study on raising a child to be completely fucking awful you'd maybe do half as well as the Dursleys are managing on raw natural talent: anything he likes is probably not fit entertainment for decent people with intelligence to insult.

Whatever. The unfamiliar programming gives me more things to talk to Harry about, as I cheerfully admit I don't remember these shows from when I was a little boy and get him to tell me everything he knows about them. Harry blithely accepts that there was telly when I was a little boy without deducing there must be time travel involved. Either he can't work with numbers that big yet or nobody's told him that telly's quite a recent invention that was barely out of prototype fifty years back from the 80s. It isn't important. Also: five-year-old explaining the plot of the godawful teen drama of the week based on hearing it through a cupboard door? _Hilarious_. If I'm around long enough, I shall be reminding Harry of this when he's all grown up.

Dinnertime rolls around and with it the quiet realisation that I've come back far enough in time that _Neighbours_ isn't on yet. Again, definitely around this time, before original-me finishes secondary school at any rate, but apparently not yet. Harry's bowl of leftovers and scrapings is actually rather better than yesterday's, but then Dudley has spent all day pestering his mum for snacks and she's let him spoil his dinner. Because heaven forfend she only ruin _one_ child's life.

Harry gets meat scraps, the fat that Dudley won't eat because it's yucky, plenty of vegetables and the whole thing topped with jelly and custard. Nutritional balance not too bad, flavour and presentation you wouldn't feed a dog 'cause the dog'd refuse. Harry gets it down his neck with every appearance of gusto. Dinner is to Vernon's schedule - he's knocked off early because it's Friday - so we're kept from hearing Coronation Street, which I'm a bit annoyed about. I can't recall if they've started doing the omnibus repeat at the weekend yet either, and I can't remember far back enough to know how things turned out for Bet Lynch.

Dudley goes to his room after dinner, doubtless to break a few toys before he falls into a prediabetic coma from the massive helping of trifle he half-finished. Harry, properly fed for once, seems to be content to curl up and listen to the story I've decided on as much for my own nostalgia as its suitability for a neglected little kid. It's one of my own children's favourites, the tale of Boudicca of the Iceni, all jazzed up. Less of the rape and the flogging and the slaughter of entire towns down to the babes in arms (Boudicca was more than slightly angry, with very good reason) and more Fabulous Julius Caesar in his Chariot of Ostriches (so called because your Os would Strich if you laid eggs that big) with his Regimented Romans in Rank on Rank, conquering all before them and Building Roads vs. Angry Old Lady Boudicca swinging her Handbag of Doom, knocking roman legionaries' heads clean off with every swing, accompanied by Disco-Dancing Druids in Flared Trousers.

It started when we lived in London and we were on our way to the London Aquarium and my eldest asked who the statue of the chariot lady on Westminster Bridge was. From there the tale grew in the nightly re-telling, as it were, getting sillier and sillier every time. I don't include the bits with the dinosaurs for Harry, because I've no idea if he even knows what they are yet.

Between the story itself and the stops to explain what things are, storytime lasts nearly two hours and Harry, well ballasted with his unusually large bowl of slops, is asleep by eight. This means that, for a change, I actually get to go spy on the Dursleys before they've wound down for the evening.

Vernon is in the dining room at an escritoire thingy - I'm not brilliant at furniture identification, okay? - going over the bills and what-not, so I look over his shoulder. Obviously there's no such thing as useless information when it comes to helping Harry, but I shan't deny there's a big helping of nosiness in the mix. Mortgage statement, current account statement, rates bills, stuff from the local primary school, all of the usual impedimenta of household accounting. There's also a stack of PAYE slips, which tell me that if he was a company director in '81, which I remember from the books, he's not any more, because the tax treatment wouldn't look like _that_ if he still was.

Which makes sense, because by Chamber of Secrets he was having to entertain prospects in his own home to make sales, which he wouldn't be doing if he was on the board of the company. (Or at all, since client entertaining is done in the fanciest restaurant your expenses limit will stand. Engineering tools and supplies can't be sold _that_ differently from legal services, can they? Or does Vernon get caught padding his expenses and put on a short rein?)

A bit of mental arithmetic with those payslips and Vernon's bank statements suggest that he's getting a bit over forty grand a year - if he has investment income on top of his salary he doesn't the paperwork out, wrong time of year for that - against a mortgage that's only four hundred quid a month. I can't see any suggestion that they're getting any kind of allowance from anywhere for Harry's subsistence, which irritates me somewhat. Dumbledore's got Harry's vault key and at least one willing minion who could deliver an envelope of cash every month or so, if Gringotts can't do standing orders to the non-magical banking system. It's not that the Dursleys need the money - I've fed a family on _much_ tighter finances than Vernon's, at late 90s London prices to boot - but that the gesture would maybe lead the buggers to dial back the abuse a bit. Or, at least, remove the obvious excuse they're lying to themselves with, that the kid's a burden.

What really makes my ectoplasm boil (yeah, I know, but I _definitely_ don't have any blood or piss in the here-and-now) is the Child Benefit statement that shows they're claiming for Harry. He's in the non-magical system although I can't tell who's responsible for that: the Dursleys _could_ have done it, but Lily, at least, would know the benefits of having a documented presence on this side of things even if you don't want to live here. The Dursleys are getting a fortnightly direct deposit that is more than enough for a five-year-old's grocery bill, clothes and shoes of his own and maybe the occasional small treat. Even after ten years of cuts and inflation - my first-born is a bit over ten years away from the present date - you could get a fair slice of the weekly family grocery shop out of the payment for one child. The hypocrisy of him damning James Potter for a dole-scrounger when he's claiming what despite being comfortably off without it we can ignore for the moment.

I start insulting Vernon direct to his face just to let off steam. It's not like he can hear me, after all. I've got all the way down to 'monkey-cum-gargling whore-begotten bastard child of a bucket of donkey puke' when he finishes up, closes the escritoire - incidentally cutting me off from having a more detailed nosy through his paperwork - and waddles off to join Petunia in the sitting room.

He disturbs her dubious enjoyment of the Jilly Cooper doorstopper she's still not finished with. "Pet, the boy has to go to school in September. You'll have to get him a uniform and what-have-you over the next few weeks, the school have sent a list."

Petunia looks up and sniffs. "The freak can have things that don't fit Dudley any more. My _dear departed Sister_ didn't think to leave anything to provide for her whelp, we shan't be spending a penny more than we have to, Vernon. We should be thankful that the little bastard doesn't thrive like _our_ son does, or we'd not even be able to do that. We have to keep him fed and sheltered, that doesn't mean we have to put ourselves out in any way whatsoever."

Vernon nods. Pettiness and selfishness clearly speak to him on some basic level. "As you say, Pet. Will we have to pay for alterations? Shoes of his own?"

Petunia rolls her eyes. "Safety pins are cheap. I'll put a stitch or two in if that doesn't do the job."

And, I don't doubt, take the opportunity to stick some pins in where they'll hurt, eh, Petunia? I notice she doesn't mention the shoes for good or ill, which is I suppose tediously inevitable.

"Anyway," Petunia goes on, "I've made sure the school knows he's a problem child that needs a firm hand. I told them we only got him recently so they won't blame _us_ if he turns out like my sister and her freak."

It is at this moment, hearing these words, that I understand why the Cruciatus Curse was invented. Neither of them have even slightly alluded to the fact that the child - as far as they know - _doesn't even know his own name_.

Vernon grunts his amused assent and drops his fat arse into his armchair, where I notice that Petunia has set out his whisky, a glass, and an ice-bucket. Petunia seems to want to make sure he's properly anaesthetised rather than expecting his conjugals and frankly, looking at the disgusting slob, I can relate. For her part she's subtly shifting on the sofa, leading me to suspect she's got to one of the racier passages in her book. I'm glad I left my stomach thirty years in the future on a rain-washed motorway, it would only be a liability to me in this house.

The Dursleys are like a pileup traffic accident involving a convoy of livestock transports, a coach-party of touring clowns and a vanload of fireworks. You know you shouldn't be gawking, but you can't look away. They're a couple held together by mutual abuse and pettiness. I dread to think what they'd be like without Harry as a lightning-rod for their ghastliness. Were they like this the day they married? Or have they each taken the events since as a cue to live their worst possible lives and just circle each other down a drain of low-grade banal evil into a fat-clogged sewer of awful?

You can't blame either one of them alone for the crap Harry's getting: some of it, sure, is Petunia appeasing Vernon, who seems inclined to be petty about raising another man's child or at least diverting any effort or resources away from his son and heir. Some of it might be Petunia's frustration about not being able to give Dudley the discipline she knows he sorely needs, using Harry as a sort of whipping-boy gone wrong. Petunia does her best to keep Harry out of Vernon's sight and uses him an excuse to praise Dudley to his father. Meanwhile Vernon appears to be suggesting some basically decent treatment for Harry - his own school uniform bought new - and Petunia shot the idea down.

A conclusion I was helped to in therapy - while my parents weren't in the same league as the Dursleys, they were definitely playing the same sodding sport - was that trying to make sense of your abusers' behaviour from what you perceived as a child is a fool's errand. Coming at the matter with the clarity of a disembodied spirit, I have to say it doesn't make any more sense even with the near-perfect vantage point I'm getting. They think the boys are asleep and don't know I'm here so they've no motive to dissemble: this is them as they are. Unmitigated bellends the both of them.

I go back to look in on Harry - sleeping contentedly, the heating's still on and he's well fed - and waft out of the house for my nightly wander. They've exhausted even the patience of the dead and I want out of their presence.

I'm stuck for inspiration as to anything else I can reconnoitre in the service of Operation Help Harry Potter, so I spend some time trying to figure out how to move faster, how to pop from place to place like the spooks in Rentaghost, and practising my poltergeisting in the same occupants-on-holiday house I used the night before last. I get some improvement in my speed and strength - I think, but I'm aware there might be wishful thinking in the matter - but popping from place to place eludes me. If it's possible at all, which I have no particular reason to believe or disbelieve.

After that and a visit to ask the church-grim who the good boy is - rhetorically, of course, since we both know, as I tell him emphatically, that _he_ is a good boy, yes he is - I go back to Number Four out of a lack of anything better to do. It's the wee small hours and the house is silent until I get into the cupboard under the stairs.

It's definitely accidental magic: Harry has silenced the space he's in so that nobody can hear that he's wailing, gasping and occasionally screaming his way through what's clearly an absolute _shitter_ of a nightmare. I don't know what it is they did to teach him not to disturb their sleep, but it's bad enough to provoke this reaction. If I was keeping a running account of things the Dursleys need to pay for, this would be another couple of yards of red in their ledger. The only thing stopping me moving them to the top of my personal shit list is the fact that they're already _there_.

"Harry, I'm here now. It's Mal. You're having a bad dream, Harry." I'm not hopeful of this working. A kid in the grip of a nightmare needs picking up and cuddling, not words of reassurance that he probably can't hear.

Per expectation, Harry just whimpers and cries, eyes screwed shut and sweating horribly. As he thrashes in his distress his hair falls away from where it covers his scar and I can see it's inflamed, angry-looking. Whether or not it's a horcrux, I get an impression from it of malignity. Literally so: I've not had a sense of smell since I died, but I get a whiff of fresh-spilt blood, the rot of spoiled meat and the ugly stench of an angry mob. If you'd asked me a minute ago for my opinion of Tom Riddle it was that he would improve the world considerably by departing it permanently and I'd be happy to help that fortunate leave-taking along. Seeing what his fragment, copy, shade, whatever, is doing to poor little Harry I can honestly say I want him to suffer on the way out. This is not some malign influence from the dark magic that's going on right in front of me, either: he's hurting a child and so the better angels of my nature have sloped off to establish alibis elsewhere for the duration.

"Harry, I hope you can hear me. I want to help you, Harry, you're having a bad dream. I'm here to help all I can, Harry." I blather on like this for I don't know how long. I try and just _touch_ him, but whatever it is that lets me do the poltergeisty thing doesn't extent to letting a hurting little boy know I'm here. I've mentioned the calm that comes with being dead - the anger I've expressed at the Dursleys has been a thing of the mind, not the emotions - but now I'm absolutely going to pieces at being powerless to help, the drive to try and get through is burning through me like fire through summer bracken.

Harry rolls on to his back, mouth wide open in a silent scream, eyes screwed tight shut. His arms lock straight at his sides and his back arches, lifting him up supported only on his heels and head. _Oh no please don't be fitting, please, not that._ Has my presence made him more susceptible somehow? Was he having seizures like this before I arrived? There's magic at play here, there has to be, why isn't the wizard responsible here and dealing with this mess? _Fuck you, Dumbledore. Scars can be useful my incorporeal arse._

Harry stays like that for a few moments - far too long - and then collapses back on his matress with a dark stain spreading down one leg of his pyjamas because that's _just_ what he fucking needs, Petunia walloping him for wetting the bed, right after whatever this hellish experience is. The possibility that Petunia will do anything else is too remote to consider, of course.

_How am I seeing this? It's dark in here. _Obviously I'm getting better at the ghost thing, or there's some magical thing going on that lets me perceive Harry's distress even with the lights off. While I've got that irrelevant thought running through my mind I let myself hope that whatever it was Harry was suffering, it's over now. And squash the thought that this is a nightly thing and I've just missed it because I've been out roaming. Not productive, not helpful, it's not like you can do anything but watch anyw - _No. No. No no no._

Harry seizes up again, this time his eyes wide open and staring sightlessly as he shudders and jerks. There's a thin, heartbreaking whine coming from the back of his throat and I can see there's blood in his mouth. Not a lot, just like he might have bitten his tongue or cheek a bit, or loosened a tooth that was already wobbly and for _fuck's sake_. I need to get a grip and try and help.

I get right in close. He can tell when I've left the cupboard, so maybe this will make the sense of my presence stronger. "Harry, it's Mal. I'm right here. Listen to me Harry, it's going to be all right, just be brave and get through this, I'm right here for you…"

I don't get chance to keep up the blather for long. Harry's head snaps round and he _looks right at me. Wide, panicked little-boy eyes that see and don't see, the light in them confused and searching and I._

_Fall. _

_Right._

_In._

-oOo-

_"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"_

Because of _course_ I'm in a nightmare of Harry's worst memory. No idea whether Harry pulled me in or my desire to help drove me in and it doesn't matter. It's fractured and crackling, we're in the cupboard and in a baby's cot at the same time and there's a green light in all of it.

_"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"_

High-pitched, shrieking laughter. Laughter that's almost, but not quite, the laughter of a human.

"_Not Harry! Not Harry! Please — I'll do anything —"_

A baby, crying.

"_Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"_

"_Run! I'll hold him off!"_

A flash of green.

"_Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"_

"_Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside, now. . . ."_

Whatever Harry's feeling about this - and thank _fuck_ he doesn't seem to remember this while he's awake, or I hope so based on how ignorant of his name he is - I'm much more able to feel now I'm in here with him. I think he must have been picking up a lot of what was going on that night. Anger. Terror. The gnawing jagged teeth of panic and despair.

Your reavers, your berzerkers, your homicidal nutcases, they can be fought. The nightmare is when they catch you flat-footed with your guard down and no way out. When something goes wrong with your plan to have an escape route. When the dirty little _scrote_ you thought was a good friend sells you out to the arch-criminal himself right where you thought you were safe. I can hear it in the voices of James and Lily Potter, repeating their last words over and over and over in Harry's nightmare. Hollow voices, wavering with the knowledge they've got to do something, and that the thought of _doing_ that something scares them silly, and that they've got nothing left to offer their son other than dying as his last line of defence.

All of this breaks over me like an angry sea, cold and battering, trying to suck me down into the dim green depths of oblivion. Somewhere in the roar of the terror and determination and the white-knuckle grip the Potters have on the very last courage they'll ever have, I hear the snapping jaws of the void, the inhuman chatter that insinuates it'd be easier to just let go and float away, nobody will care...

_Hold the line, and die standing._ Stupid cheesy line from the lore of a stupid cheesy game and I happened to read it at an emotionally pivotal moment and it's become something I whisper to myself at bad moments. _Hold the fucking line, and fucking die standing._ As I repeat the words I can feel myself straightening up, becoming more the man with duty to do than the cringing ape that wants to flee into the treetops. _Hold the line, you that's calling yourself Mal now. _

It's apropos, here in the shuddering vortex of a child's nightmare: I know what those two did. Here where they're still real I will _not_ dishonour their sacrifice by freezing up and doing nothing in the teeth of the horror and pain and terror and regret and madness that's eddying around and through me. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and they put their very lives and souls down as payment for one last desperate magic to save their little boy and I'm not crying _you're crying -_

"HARRY! It's me, Mal!" It actually takes me a couple of tries to get the shout out of my mouth. _I have a mouth? Of course I do, this is a dream._ I have to sharpen my will and focus on the need to get to Harry. I remember my own kids: three pairs of eyes opening for the first time in the delivery suites of three different hospitals. Memories _burned_ into my mind by the sheer electric clarity of those defining moments. I can bear much, but not _their_ disappointment in Daddy, and that's the whip that goads me on in times like this. "HARRY! I'm coming!" _Much_ louder. Stronger. More fuckin' _like_ it.

The storm - as good a word as any for it - abates, but I can still hear crying. Direction, distance, all snarled up. Adult dreams are messy things, but they're a tidy stack of neat little boxes next to a child's nightmare.

But, I need to go to Harry, so to Harry I go between one thought and the next; location's not really a thing in a dream. You can either go somewhere or you can't and time and distance arrange themselves accordingly. A child's bedroom, a cot with a toddler in it, a discarded black robe and _Oh fuckin' 'ell no_ a dead mother. And a dead mother's shade. I pick Harry up out of the cot - he's five-year-old-Harry now and I have a body here in the dream _and don't think about whether you're wearing pants this is NOT going to be a no-pants dream - _and hold and cuddle him close on my left shoulder where he clings like a limpet while I make eye contact with the fading shade of Lily Potter.

I don't know how I know this, but it's as certain to me as the seasons and the tides: somehow here in Harry's dream I can see across the years to look that poor, brave, _doomed_ girl right in the eye. Could I have done what she did? I hope I could have, but it's in that difference between _hope_ and _know_ where our admiration for heroes grows.

"I'll take it from here. You rest, okay?" Stupid, empty words, cold comfort for the dying. Sorry, love, but it's all I've got.

She gives me the smallest of small smiles.

I touch the rune on Harry's forehead. "Your work?"

The merest hint of a nod. _Thought so_.

Nothing but a stolen moment left. I stand up straight, Harry's clinging tight to me now. As Lily vanishes I render her a salute, probably looks horribly amateurish since I only learned how from seeing it done on the telly and at Remembrance Day parades. She's muggleborn, she'll know what the gesture means even if I'm not picture-perfect with it. "Godspeed," I whisper to the space where she was. I might have lost my religion over the years - from altar boy to atheist in one simple series of harsh reality checks - but the ritual words still have the power they were given when I learned them in school at Harry's age. "Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord…" and I can't say the rest. This is _not_ the time and place to fall to bits.

I can't see him, but my friend from the churchyard is here. I can feel his presence. _Good boy!_

Enough for the dead. Harry's alive and needs me. "Told you I was coming to help, Harry," I say, rubbing his back.

"You're not a ghost," he murmurs, sleep in every syllable.

"This is a dream, Harry," I tell him, "Ghosts are real in dreams."

"Am I a ghost in dreams?" Harry asks.

"It's your dream, Harry. When you wake up you'll be all real again and I'll still be a ghost. The rules are different in dreams." I'm not entirely sure what's going on myself, so I've no hope of explaining it properly to Harry. I'm uncomfortably aware that it'd be easy to give the kid the impression that being dead is preferable to being alive, and he's already at serious risk of learning that from people he _doesn't_ like and has learned _not_ to trust.

There's the sound of a motorbike and rushing wind, we're sat in a sidecar but we can't see who's driving it. I mean, I _know_ it's Rubeus Hagrid because Sirius Black is off being a complete and utter pillock about his vengeance - far better to let the little shit think he was safe and then wake up one day tied to a chair while you grin at him over a pair of pliers and a blowtorch - but Harry's perceptions rule here and he never saw what was going on.

"Are you going to be my daddy now?" Harry asks, which punches me right in the gut. For more than the obvious reasons. When it got really bad at home and it looked like there was going to be an acrimonious divorce - which with hindsight _was_ actually the best option available for all concerned - I heard exactly the same words out of my little sister's mouth. That particular episode came up a _lot_ in therapy. But right now it's an honest question from a tired and hurting little boy.

"Here in the dream, where I'm real, I'll do what your daddy can't any more. So yes, sort of. As close as I can get, Harry. When we wake up, I'm your ghost friend and while I can't _do_ what your daddy did, I can _say_ the things daddies say, is that all right?"

"Yes." The cling gets a little tighter for the moment, by way of hug. I hug back. So long as Harry's got realistic expectations of what I can do for him, we'll be fine.

Silence. And we're back in the cupboard under the stairs at Number Four. Except not awake, and it's huge in here. Still dreaming, then. Something is scratching at the door. Still a nightmare, then. Don't know what, it's not _my_ nightmare. In _my_ nightmares, _I'm_ the monster. "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"We're still dreaming, Harry. Do you want me to fight the bad dream with you?"

"Fight?"

"Yep. The bad dreams come, but you've got me here with you. Does that make you feel braver?"

A long pause. He has to think about that one, and thinking while you're dreaming is _hard_. "Yes." He says, eventually. He sounds … confident. _Proud of you, kid._

"All for one and one for all!" I sing out.

"Muskehounds are always ready!" Harry sings back, and giggles.

I set him down and think _real_ hard about how he needs to be dressed. I'm as surprised as anyone when he's suddenly in a tunic and hose and a big wide-brimmed hat. He's got a sword in a baldric over his shoulder, and fencing gloves on his hands. "Proper little Dogtanian, you are, Harry." I grin at him.

He giggles and looks at me. "You're all shiny," he says.

I look down, and so I am. Sort of man-shaped blob of glow. "You're right," I say, "I'm still all ghosty, aren't I? Let's see if I can fix that." I think for a moment, because I have to get this right: that scratching at the door is getting louder. Harry needs a guard, a protector, a friend, and someone who is Clearly A Grown Up In Charge. A Musketeer might do, and he'd get the reference, but it's not really _me_. I've read the book and Dumas wrote interestingly flawed characters. I'm a long way from figuring out the rules of dreamland, but I'm pretty sure ideas _count_ here, so becoming a drunk, a dandy or a womaniser might well backfire. Knight in shining armour? My class consciousness is _definitely_ going to get in the way of that one. Sure, a D&D Paladin might work, but Harry won't get the reference. Harry needs calm, strong, not necessarily perfect but definitely in the business of doing the right thing and - yeah. Only one real option. I stand up and assume my full height next to harry. I concentrate on the right sort of clothes - homespun-looking robes. And try and remember what the bloody hell I look like so I get the face right.

"Are you a muskehound too?" Harry asks. "Where's your hat?"

"I'm too big and grown up to be a muskehound, Harry," I tell him, thankful that I can actually smile where he can see it. "I am a Jedi Knight, guardian of peace and justice throughout the galaxy."

"Will I be a Jedi when I grow up?" Harry's heard both of the Star Wars films that are out on Betamax: he gets the reference.

"Work hard at school, do all your homework, and learn all the lessons I teach you, Harry, and you can be a Jedi if you still want to. You might want to be something else when you're grown up, though." I kneel down to look him right in the eye. "Whatever you choose, I'll be with you all the way, Harry."

"Brilliant! Cor, you've got a scar too, just like me." He points to the spot above my left eye.

"I have, haven't I? Except mine's a straight line where yours is all jaggy. I got it by being silly and bumping my head really, really hard." No need to tell him that the silliness in question was a poorly-thought-out suicide attempt. And it looks a lot more impressive than it is because the doctor who stitched it up offered to stitch it so it made a bigger scar to impress girls with. I was fifteen at the time, and an easy sell for a pitch like that. From that day to this I've not heard a girl express any opinion one way or another on the matter. With hindsight, I think he was just making excuses for piss-poor suturing skills.

"Can I -" I don't get to know what the next question is, because whatever was scratching at the door has finally scratched _through._

It's a man, but it's a gangrel and shambling _thing_ of a man with red eyes and a corpse-pallor countenance. He has a hungry air about him, unfed and predatory. If I had a Wrong 'Un Detector to hand this fucker would be burying the needle. He pulls himself through the crack in the door - lightning-bolt shaped, not that I needed any more clues as to who this is - and unfolds like a demon-haunted scarecrow to stand before us.

Harry steps in close on my left side and grabs my hand for reassurance. Which is, of course, all I need to summon up the blood and stiffen the sinew. Immortal Dark Wizard or not, he's not getting to Harry without me making him pay a bitter price in _pain_. One step closer, pal, and you are getting a _shoeing_. Worst he can do is kill me, which: nah. Been there, done that, don't see what the fuss is about any more. After that, Harry's got a sword and I _will_ have maimed the fucker to the point where Harry will be able to finish the job.

I've no idea where this absolute certainty is coming from unless - Oh. Yes. This is _Harry's_ dream and he's decided he has faith in me. Little kids work on the assumption that Daddy can do _anything_ he puts his mind to, and that was a dangling pointer in Harry's psyche until, well, tonight. I came and got him from the bad dream, didn't I? That's practically the qualifying exam for being a Daddy and he's awarded me a passing mark.

That faith doesn't come with an adult's doubts and quibbles, either. Tom, the blithering arrogant hubristic idiot, has willingly come in to the one place where I _definitely, absolutely_ have a power he knows not. And probably would have rejected if it was offered him, because - damn you, Dumbledore, you're half right about this at least - where it comes from is love. Acknowledging it fills me up and makes me feel like I could deadlift a largish planet. The force is my ally, all right. Is he going to be fool enough to kick off at me? Please say he is, oh _please_. I don't want to start anything because there is such a thing as pushing your luck, but Tom's timing in trying a break-in right when Harry's belief in me is at its freshest and most uncompromised is a stroke of _ridiculous_ good fortune.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, I presume" I say, doing my best effort at a Mona Lisa smile. Not my usual mode of provocation, but I need this to be subtle and obviously Tom's fault to avoid setting a bad example for Harry. (Absent that, he'd already have three foot of lightsaber up the jacksie and his face making the repeated and forceful acquaintance of my size elevens.)

"Do not ssspeak that name," he hisses, drawing himself up in what he imagines is a regal pose. Whatever splitting off from his primary self did to him, it's nothing good. I don't know if it's the power of Harry's faith in me or just degradation from the battering Lily and James gave him, but he seems _weak_.

"You prefer your little anagram, Tom? I grew out of indulging the whims of insecure teenagers a long time ago. If you'd just let yourself grow up a little, you know, you'd be a lot happier." Not least because world domination, on the historical record, doesn't so much _have_ failure modes as _consist_ of them. Like trying to nail diarrhoea to the ceiling. Just ask any of the Axis powers.

He doesn't answer, just gives me a look of loathing that tells me he'd not been expecting me and is now revising whatever plan he had. I find bearing his ill-regard no great burden.

"Who is he, Mal?" Harry's question is quiet, but clear. And steady of voice, too. Kid's a little trooper, and whatever the paperwork might say, I'm adopting him and fuck what anyone else has to say on the matter. _To answer your earlier question, Harry, yes, I'll be your daddy._

"Tom, here, is a ghost. A ghost of the bad man who hurt your mummy and daddy. Don't be afraid of him, he can't hurt you in a dream, not with me here."

Harry doesn't answer. That's kind of a big deal to drop on a five-year-old, and he squeezes my hand a little tighter while he tries to get his head around it.

"I am no _mere ghost,_" Tom hisses, "I -"

"Psst!" I cut him off. "Harry is _five_. Ghost is what he understands. We _both_ know what you are, and what folly trapped you where you are even if you're lying to yourself about the wrong you've done. Burdening a child with _that _knowledge is an evil I will _not _permit."

A sneer. "There is no good or evil, only power."

It's a long-standing complaint of mine that the whole Nietzsche schtick only ever gets trotted out by people who either never read him or only read the edition his complete _fuckwitted racist_ of a sister mangled with her 'editing.' "Fuck's sake, Tom, you really _didn't_ grow out of being a teenage twat, did you? Power is the capacity to do useful work, no more, no less. Romanticising power like that is just plain _stupid_."

"Stupid, you say?" Tom purrs, and takes a step forward, "Surely _stupid_ is coming to the child, spirit, and seeking to come within the protection his mother left him. She surprised me with the old magic, spirit, but do not think I am _ignorant _of it. When it opened to let you in there was a momentary chink in the armour. And now I am here to claim the boy."

"You and what army?" I scoff. "Harry, draw your sword like a proper Muskehound!"

Harry's hand disappears from mine, and I hear the swish of a rapier out of its scabbard. "All for one and one for all!" he pipes up. "En garde!" Harry's brave, but not stupid, and stays well in back of me. I daren't look around because collapsing in helpless joyful laughter and stopping to hug the stuffing out of him would be counterproductive at this time.

I grin at Tom instead. "See? You're outnumbered."

The look on his face is fuckin' _priceless_. Either he can't believe I think Harry counts in a fight or he can't believe I'm willing to look Evil Most Orgulous right in the eye and flat-out take the piss out of him. He has the face of a man who's not even considering the possibility that I know something he doesn't. "Even were he not a child, numbers mean nothing. I. Am. Lord. VOLDEMORT!"

"You're a looney," I tell him, and Harry giggles. That's the way, kid. The Devil, proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. Jeer and flout him.

It's in this moment that I realise something rather important: I'm smarter than Tom is. (Or this instance of him, at any rate: there are five, possibly six others and this one might just be the duff one of the batch.) I spotted early on that we're in a dream, where ideas and belief and feelings have power. He still hasn't got it. Or has, and is too proud to admit his mistake in coming here.

I'm a bit surprised he's not trying Legilimency on me but he's got me pegged as a spirit so maybe it doesn't work on my kind. Or maybe he has, without me noticing, and thinks I'm deluded into overconfidence and he can take me. Not here, pillock. In here, the Force is my ally, and a small gesture lets me shape the flow of it to repair the crack he came in by. We're not locked up in here with you, Tom, you're locked up in here with _us_.

Tom sneers. "Your insolence will not stand. You are _nothing_."

"That's where you're wrong, Tom. Here, with Harry at my back? I am _everything_ Daddy can be in the mind of a child." I shrug off the outer robe of my Jedi habit, letting it fall to the ground behind me. "Harry, stay behind me, and stay close."

"Muskehound!" Harry yells.

"Pathetic," Tom drawls, a wand coalescing from dream-stuff in his hand. "Mawkish sentiment is no match for the true power of the Dark Arts."

I'm not even going to _try_ and resist a straight line like that. "Do not be too proud of this magical terror you wield, Tom. The ability to kill a man with a single incantation is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

"Force? What nonsense are you spouting?"

A simple thought makes the lightsaber on my belt leap to my hand, like an eager hound who sees his master getting ready to go hunting. "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me," I tell him. _Snap-hiss_. "I need have no fear of a man like you." The lightsaber is a pure brilliant white and its radiance burgeons with the joy I'm feeling. This is _right_. So very, very _right._

Tom, clearly growing weary of what he considers nonsense, brings his wand up to a guard in sixte. "There _are_ no men like me."

Yeah. Quotes from movies that won't be out for years: the smart-arse's shortcut to devastating wit. I smile at him; he couldn't have set this up better if I'd given him a script. "Oh, _Tom_. There are _always_ men like you."

"AVADA KEDAVRA," is his only response, a slash of his wand sending a hissing green spit of glowing hatred at us. The world slows and I feel like I have all the time in the world to react.

Idiot. Trying a killing move in the dream of a child not old enough to really understand mortality? Even if I thought it'd work I don't need the Force for this one. I don't even need the paltry few fencing lessons I took. Hundreds of hours at the crease with a bat in my hand and he thinks he's going to achieve anything by bowling me a beamer? It's a piece of unsportsmanlike conduct I was laughing to scorn before I was _ten_. Clearly cricket is _also_ a Power He Knows Not. Pivot, step, high line, hook-and-pull and the Killing Curse is off to somewhere around Square Leg. No batting partner to judge how many runs its good for, more's the pity - here in dreamland I'm not hampered by the trick shoulder or the dodgy knee or being literal decades out of practise. Even that sourpuss Boycott would have called it a good stroke.

Three more nasty-looking things come spitting out of Tom's wand in quick succession. It's like net practise: an off cut and a leg glance deal with the first two - playing them up because there aren't any fielders to catch me out and Harry's short - and I go for a square drive for the last and make the fucker flinch as his curse goes right back to him faster than he sent it. Missed him by a gnat's todger, if that. Each stroke is a step further down the wicket - we're on the cricket ground near where I grew up now. Home advantage on top of everything else. There's a train thundering over the West Coast Main Line railway bridge at my back and I can hear Harry swishing his sword in time with my own bladework.

"CRUCIO!" Okay, that's Unforgivable number two, Tom. And it's actually a better choice: he should have led with it because Harry _understands_ pain. Here in the dream world it manifests as Force Lighting; my expectations shape Harry's expectations which shape what we _all_ experience. It surprises the hell out of Tom when the normally-invisible curse sparks and arcs across the space between us, but not half so much as when I repeat Yoda's move from Revenge of the Sith and catch it in my hand. It takes concentration, because I can't break the movie rules as I understand them, and there's some bleed-over of his desire to hurt me, but it's well within my tolerance for pain. I try to gather up the malevolence he's hurling at me to throw it back, but he has the sense to cut off the curse before I can turn it on him.

I take another pace forward, my lightsaber low because that's how I take guard with a cricket bat. My _actual_ sabre teacher would be laughing his conkers off at what I'm doing.

"IMPERIO!" There's a panicked note to the yelled incantation as Tom makes it three out of three with the Unforgivables. I have no idea whether I'm immune or not, and don't find out now. I'm pretty sure it'd work if it connected, because again Harry understands being made to do as you're told against your will, just as all little kids do when it comes to bedtime and no more sweeties and other grievous injustices that parents inflict. But, well, Tom's visibly shaken and as Bellatrix said: when casting unforgivables you have to _mean it_. In all the spells whose casting is described in the books there's an element of self-belief: you have to want and intend and believe it'll work or it'll fizzle. He's just watched me no-sell everything he threw at me and I suspect that from his point of view I'm moving so fast I blur. After a lifetime of steamrolling nearly all the opposition he faced, he's getting his first ever case of performance anxiety. I'd be honestly surprised if he could get a shower of sparks off, the state he's in. His spell dissipates in the air between us like a bad smell.

He starts backing up. "If so powerful you are, why leave?" I ask, nicking Yoda's line to go with the move I borrowed, picking up the pace to start outright _prowling_ toward him.

"You're _silly!" _Harry tells him, brandishing his sword and stepping up next to me. "You're just a _bad dream!"_

"Go on, Tom," I say, "Offer us power."

A faint flicker of hope in his eyes. He thinks I can be bargained with. I'd say he shouldn't have neglected muggle cinema, but this one won't be out for a couple of years yet. "Yes, yes," he says, "I can teach you much. All of magic and the Dark Arts, I -"

"Offer us riches too." I'm still moving in on him.

"The very world! It could be ours for the taking! When Lord Voldemort rules -"

"Offer us everything we could possibly want."

"Of course - Lord Voldemort is gener - urk!"

His final promise is cut short by me running my lightsaber into his guts. "Harry wants his mummy back, you son of a bitch."

Harry, for his own part, surprises me by giving Tom a good whack with his sword. "You. Are. A. _Baddy!" _he yells, punctuating each word with another whack. "You. Hurt. My. Mummy. And. Now. I. Have. To. Live. With. Rotten. Aunt. Petunia!"

When Harry's done, I turn off the lightsaber and let Tom fall, his wand clattering to the floor from nerveless fingers. I take a knee so I can look right in his face. "The real you, out there in the real world, will never know," I tell him, "But one day we will come for him, and Harry won't be a little child. He'll be the most fell and fatal enemy you could imagine in your worst nightmares, and neither of us mean to fight fair. You chose, all those years ago, to live your life on the road to failure, and Harry and I will be there to see you when you get there."

Tom gives a sort of choking croak, like he's trying to say something, but he's starting to unravel. And suddenly _smells delicious,_ like beautifully cooked rare steak with the bearnaise sauce just so and I can't help myself. I lean in and _swallow._

Harry looks at me wide-eyed. "You gobbled him all up!"

"I did," I say, surprised too. _Where the FUCK did that come from?_

"Are you going to gobble me up too?" Harry asks with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"Of course not," I say, "I only gobble up the baddies. And only when they're ghosts." It's reassurance for myself as much as anyone - this is the first time I've ever eaten anyone, and I don't want to repeat it at all, never mind with anyone I actually like and care about.

"Oh, that's all right then," Harry says, with the blithe acceptance only little kids can muster.

"Hug?" I ask him, opening my arms out wide.

He dives in for a proper hug. The Dursleys haven't quite beaten this out of him yet, thank goodness.

**Where am I? What is this place?**

It's Tom's voice, and it's coming from inside me.

_Oh, for fuck's sake._

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

Announcer: It's Friday, It's Five to Five, it's time for … CRACKERJACK!

Entire Audience: CRACKERJAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

I was dismayed to learn that there was a Dark Time in children's television where there was no Crackerjack AND no Gordon The Gopher and Harry's fifth birthday falls right in the middle of it. Truly, the Fates have shat on the Boy-Who-Lived.

Child Benefit is not means-tested, and consists of a basic payment for the first child in a family and a supplement for every subsequent one. It's paid to whoever the child lives with and, at the time, ran from birth to the kid's 18th birthday (it may have changed since, looking it up is left as an exercise etc.)

PAYE: Pay as You Earn, the scheme whereby almost nobody in the UK has to fill out and file an annual income tax return. If you know what you're looking for you can tell a lot about someone's employment from their payslips as a result, including if they're a company director (who get slightly different treatment to regular employees.)

JKR's portrayal of Vernon Dursley, Cartoon Child Abuser is all over the place, from 'company director with a free pass from HR about shouting at the staff' in chapter 1 of Philosopher's Stone to 'trying to close a sale with no client entertainment budget and a definite air of desperation' by the beginning of Chamber of Secrets. Over ten years separates those two events, one implying a man at the top of the company and the other a man desperately trying to justify his place in it while unable to draw fully on its resources. I've come up with a plausible way he could have had that career trajectory and it will appear in future chapters.

And finally: you surely didn't think the Muskehounds theme tune was gone for _good_ from this story? _Sharing everything with fun, that's the way to be! _This chapter ran on a lot longer than I expected, hence the cliffhanger. I'd apologise, but I'm not a _bit_ sorry.

Fanfic Recommendation: Echoes, by BlackDeviousRose. Available on FFN, and updated again after a break while I was editing this chapter. An SI story with a _sensible_ protagonist who resolves to have nothing to do with the Plot.


	5. Oh, come on, they were asking for this

DISCLAIMER: Is Voldemort's ability to alter memories as portrayed in the books so massively game-breaking that he shouldn't have ever _needed_ to start an insurgency? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 5

_**Where am I? What is this place?**_

_It's Tom's voice, and it's coming from inside me._

_Oh, for fuck's sake._

-oOo-

Harry can tell something's up. "Are you all right, Mal?" he asks, sounding worried as well he might. We were mid hug when I heard Tom speak, and I suspect I flinched or jumped or something.

"Nothing to worry about, Harry," I tell him. "Just, well, when I gobbled up the baddy ghost, it's given me a bit of a tummy ache."

**Lord Voldemort is not a tummy ache.**

_Lord Voldemort can shut his bloody yap,_ I think back as hard as I can.

Harry looks worried. "Is there ghost medicine? Aunt Petunia has medicine for Dudley when he gets a tummy ache."

"It's different for ghosts, Harry. I can … hang on." Things are … different somehow. I feel heavier. Like I've got actual mass, which makes no sense because here in Harry's dream I'm just an idea. Something is _very_ different in just the short time since I swallowed the shade of Tom Riddle.

**My magic! You've stolen my magic you thieving fucking **_**muggle!**_

Okay, that's funny. The cultured aristocratic drawl and the sinister Dark Lord hiss have both gone, and Tom's accent has reverted back to his London guttersnipe orphan origins. Also, it turns out Dolores Umbridge was right. Muggles _can_ steal wizard magic, they just have to die and devour a dark lord's accidental pseudo-horcrux to do it. And oh my, is Tom salty about this latest development.

**When the real me gets hold of you, you cunt, he's going to take you **_**apart**_**.**

_Shut it, Tom. You lost, you got et, end of story. Pipe down or the next thing I send down there will be kimchi. Which, you ignorant bigoted xenophobic little oik, is spicy fermented cabbage._

**I know what kimchi is, I travelled widely in search of powerful magics. Even as far as -**

_Shut up._

"Harry," I say, "I think I know what happened. Tom, who was a very very bad man, also had magic. So his ghost had magic, and when I ate his ghost I got magic too."

"So you're a magic ghost daddy now?" Harry contrives to imply, by tone and expression, that this may just be the coolest thing ever. I, ah, kind of agree. "Can you turn Uncle Vernon into a toad?"

"I don't know _what_ I can do just yet -"

**Release me and I shall teach you -**

_Shut UP! _" - but even if I _can_ turn Uncle Vernon into a toad it wouldn't be right. If you're stronger than someone you shouldn't bully them just because you can."

Harry's face suggests that he's not fully on board with this line of moral reasoning. I can sympathise, but being an arsehole just for the sake of it, or even for revenge, sits ill with me. Being an arsehole in service of some more important need, however, is something I'm willing to take a view on. Case-by-case basis, sort of thing. Nothing else, if I've got Tom Riddle's magic then I might just be able to alter the Dursleys' lives to the point where they stop being so utterly ghastly.

Or, you know, put them under deep and pervasive mind control until I've trained them into better habits generally. Which _better_ not be a suggestion from the antisocially-disordered personality I just ate.

**I didn't say **_**anything**_**.**

_Good work, keep it up._

"Am I still dreaming?"

"Yes you are, Harry. Shall we see if we can have a happy dream?"

Big round eyes. Not saying yes in case he just imagined that. _Know the feelin', our kid._

I focus on a memory. Harry and I are walking down a long brick-paved concourse with gift and sweet shops either side.

"Where are we, Mal?"

"Walking through one of my memories, Harry. Have you heard of Alton Towers?" I've picked this particular memory because it's one of precisely two visits where I wasn't here with my kids: showing Harry that kind of family scene would be pure cruelty right now. The other one was marked by a gigantic row and the end of a relationship, also not fit viewing for small children.

Harry starts jumping up and down. "Dudley wants to go here and he hasn't! I got to go _first!_"

I decide I can't tell him that this is Alton Towers in the future of an alternate universe. Leaving out the risk of the bad guys finding out that this is even _possible_ \- very bad, imagine Voldemort with a do-over - trying to explain it to a five year old little boy who's suddenly allowed to ask questions for the first time in his life? We'd be here all night.

**Muggle rubbish**_**.**_

_You're just jealous. Pipe down and be digested in silence, Tom._

I take Harry around my memories of the better rides and remember why adults put themselves through the wringer of taking their kids to theme parks. That look on their faces makes the exhaustion worth it. The effect of the joy on my unwilling passenger - just how badly do you have to fuck yourself up that the happiness of a child is actually painful? - is just a nice little side benefit. He grumbles and moans all the way round and I mock him without mercy. I don't know why, but I just don't feel threatened by his presence: I've got his magic and I get no sense that he can get out. If he's even trying: if he is, it's too ineffectual for me to tell he's doing it.

"Mal, who are those ladies who are always with us?" Harry demonstrates his observation skills as we're strapping in for our fourth go on Nemesis.

"Well, remember I said this is my memory? This visit I went with my girlfriend and her best friend. So when I remember the rides I remember the ladies who were on them with me."

"Oh." Girls are a largely theoretical thing in Harry's mind right now, and definitely not a topic he seems to want to explore in any particular detail. I leave it there: it's my mind controlling the environment we're in and there are some capital-M Memories associated with that relationship. If my focus wanders Harry'll get a slice of education he's far, far too young for.

It's only as we're finishing that ride and I'm promising Harry we can do this again - I don't want to find out the hard way that it's a bad idea to keep going all night - that I realise that having magic has changed how my memory works. Everything's _much_ sharper and better-realised than my former completely muggle recollection and I can make it interactive for Harry using nothing but a little imagination and focus.

Which, from the point of view of keeping Harry entertained during the long winter evenings, is great, but it does suggest that magical minds and memories are qualitatively different. Hence things like the Pensieve, I suppose. I let the speculation percolate away in the back of my mind while I'm talking Harry down to quiet, restful, un-dreaming sleep, which turns out to involve a lot of promising to still be here in the morning.

I decide I might just interrogate my guest while Harry's getting some rest, and without really knowing how I'm doing it, come out from his mind and dreams and back into the cupboard under the stairs.

-oOo-

Back in external reality Harry is sleeping peacefully. On the other hand, he's sleeping in a mess of his own piss, and blood and ichor that has leaked all over his face from the famous Scar. Petunia's going to have an absolute _fit_ if I let her. Besides that, things have very much changed, not least of the changes being that I'm now visible to myself. I'm a sort of semi-solid glowy thing with arms and legs and hands and feet that I can see and feel, and Harry has a bit of a glow about him too. Must be the magic, it's not like there's any other candidate.

**My magic, you thief. Mine.**

_Nope. My magic, I nicked it fair and square._

**There was nothing fair about what you did. In a fair duel I would have crushed you.**

_Hardly an incentive for me to fight fair, now is it?_

Seriously, Tom needs to stop feeding me straight lines that I can answer with movie quotes. Actually, that's interesting. He's done it several times now, and he's generally piped up when what he has to say would be apropos or amusing, mostly at his expense. Now, before I died, one of my sidelines was writing: good enough to get published in very niche markets, and Tom's interjections are a bit like having a well developed character suggest his own dialogue.

There's actually some real neurological science behind the phenomenon, too. The theory goes that our social functioning, empathy and so forth evolved as a way of modelling other peoples' minds to predict how they might react, and so we carry a copy of everyone we meet in our heads, the level of detail in the copy determined by how well we know them. Fiction writers just extend that to people they made up and when the model gets detailed enough you get the thing a lot of writers report of the characters 'taking over'.

So, if I ate Tom, then what I have now is a perfectly true-to-life model of Tom as he was after getting blown up by Lily, rent asunder by his own Dark Arts tomfoolery with horcruxes, and carried around on Harry's forehead for nearly four years.

**Don't ask me for my opinion, apparently I'm just your mental marionette.**

_Yeah, fuck you Tom. You're a liar, a thief, and a murderer so your opinion carries no weight even if you weren't just a neurological epiphenomenon._

I've no idea what I'm about with all this - devouring minds and possibly souls wasn't taught at any school I went to - but there's a deep-seated human instinct, when faced with something one doesn't understand, to start meddling. Meddling with things we don't understand is, indeed, how we progress as a species. Meddling until you _do_ understand is fundamental. Once you start writing it down, of course, it becomes your actual science. I turn my attention inward, looking for Tom, with a vague aim of 'begin at the beginning'

Of an instant I'm in a cramped little bedroom. Spartan would be the most generous thing I could say about it: a single bed, a small wardrobe, and nothing else. Everything is clean but shabby and well-worn. I _know_ this scene. A young boy and a middle-aged man in a plum velvet suit are sitting on the bed. Neither individual looks anything like the movie actors, another point for this being the books' continuity.

I look closer. Nice suit, Albus, just not for _this_ decade. It'd be fine for about 1912 or 1968, but in 1937 he looks like a music-hall caricature of a gay man. Or 'flaming great poof' in the parlance of the time, no wonder the matron of the orphanage needed a stiff drink and mind control magic to cope with leaving him alone with even her worst little boy: the popular belief at the time was that all gay men were pederasts.

Aaannd the wardrobe is on fire, way to teach the creepy kid that might makes right, Albus. It plays out how I remember: apparently what Dumbledore shows Harry in the future is the genuine article. He was either going for warts-and-all or honestly didn't think that what he was doing was wrong. Of course, he was raised in the 19th century by a father who went to prison for torturing children to death, so it could well be that this is reasonable discipline by his lights. His ideas must have improved in later life, though: he's the headmaster who stopped corporal punishment at Hogwarts.

Doing my best not to think about how Tom would react - which seems to keep him quiet - I consider what I want to learn about magic while I'm rummaging through Tom's memories. I mean, I've got seven years of Dumbledore himself teaching Transfiguration in here, and whatever else anyone says about him, he's supposed to have been a pretty good teacher.

That said, this is the word of a population that put up with a dead guy teaching history out of a textbook written by the wizarding equivalent of Hitler's great-aunt, so maybe I'm setting myself up for disappointment. Not that the muggle world doesn't have some complete deadlegs standing at the front of classrooms. Looking at _you_, Mrs. Chester, who left an entire O-Level Maths class to their own self-taught devices. Not that I'm bitter: I got a C at A Level entirely on my _own_ lack of merits.

Anyway: prioritise. I need to be able to guide Harry through the minefield of interacting with the Dursleys, and the obvious choice there is legilimency. Know what they're thinking, guide Harry accordingly. And, as far as I understand it, mind control and memory modification are related disciplines, and Tom was acknowledged master of the lot. Being currently a creature of pure mind it'll be playing to the only strength I've actually got, too.

I got Tom's Hogwarts invitation just now because it was what _I_ understood as the beginning for Tom - before that it's Tragic Backstory from my perspective as a reader - so I decide I want memories of learning and practising Legilimency.

*** DISCONTINUITY ***

I have no idea how long that took and apparently assimilating memories in bulk is a thing you can't remember doing - I've drifted out of the cupboard and it's a quarter past six. Petunia will be up soon if she doesn't lie in of a weekend. I scoot back in to check on Harry. He's smiling in his sleep and I can _tell he's dreaming_. I can't pick out any detail, I'd have to open his eyelids and look in to get that _and how the fuck do I know that? Tom?_

**You've stolen my legilimency, you thieving muggle bastard.**

Well, now isn't _that_ something? I'm having a bit of an "I know Kung Fu" moment here and my newly-acquired mental model of Tom is complaining about the loss. If I take memories, I take them into myself and out of whatever he is now. That digestion crack I made earlier was actually on the money. I decide I don't care how he feels about this: if you don't want bits of your mind eaten you shouldn't leave them lying about in little boys' facial injuries while murdering their parents.

The downside is that I can remember all the stuff Tom _did_ with these skills while he was honing them and really, if I was without scruples about Tom suffering and dying before, I now want him the fuck off my planet _pronto prontissimo_. Some people just need killing. I again have cause to be thankful my stomach is three and a half decades away on a mortuary slab somewhere.

Fortunately, it's a not a lot relative to who I am as a person - maybe a couple of years dedicated to learning and practising, measured against fifty years of me-as-a-whole. I know that I'm not remembering my own actions here because I also remember not having these memories and I remember a _lot_ more of being me who straight up couldn't do this stuff even if I wanted to. On the whole I think I'm going to take it _very carefully_ from here on in when it comes to picking out bits of Tom to digest. I didn't get all that therapy because I was a well adjusted individual after all, and splicing in too much Magic Serial Killer is unlikely to end well. Or, at least, the possible failure modes are bad enough that only the very smallest risks are acceptable. The downside is I'm not suddenly possessed of all Voldemort's skills. The upside, of course, is that I'm not suddenly possessed by an echo of Voldemort's personality.

It's quite enough that I've become able to read minds, send visions, delete or alter memories and HOLY SHIT POSSESS PEOPLE. This isn't something Voldemort could do because he delved deep into forbidden lore, it's a skill he bloody well set out to learn; apparently it's right at the top of the legilimency learning curve. It's how he got away with murdering his muggle family: he didn't do the deed himself and alter his uncle's memory, he possessed his uncle and altered the man's memory to remove the evidence of possession. Any forensic evidence would have shown the body of Morfin Gaunt present at the scene and casting the fatal spells.

Looking over his early work, he actually did very little of the memory modification Dumbledore accused him of to Harry. Not out of any scruple - what few scruples he had he took pains to divest himself of. Rather because it's difficult to get right and apparently kind of obvious to a legilimens. Not that 'forensic legilimens' is a post in anyone's law enforcement organisation despite the apparent crying need. The other problem is that if you get it wrong you leave your victim with some mix of psychosis and catatonia and even an expert like Tom is far more likely to get it wrong than right. Far easier to just possess your man, lay down real memories of eg. killing a bunch of muggles or putting poison in mistress's tea, and then edit out your presence afterward. The memories still look tampered with, but not actually fake.

That aside, the skill-set I've got now is quite enough to be going on with, and I'm going to get a live exercise very soon. Petunia is going to come down to a little boy who's had a night-time accident and the chance that she's going to deal with it as a responsible caregiver would is so small as to not be worth considering. I'm not going to give her a choice. And, just to add insult to injury, all the while I'm piloting her underfed carcass through the process of getting Harry cleaned up and fed breakfast, I'm going to be lecturing her on all her faults and failings as a wife and mother in particular and as a human being in general.

I'm about to compose myself in patience to wait for Petunia to get up when I realise that I'm selling Harry short, here. Poor kid needs a bath, proper clothes found, and a breakfast. And Dudley needs a short, sharp shock of proper parenting. Soonest begun, soonest done, after all. And it's not like beauty sleep is doing Petunia a bit of good. (I'm being unkind: a lot of what makes Petunia unattractive is her character warping her face and posture. Hate, anger, bitterness: these all can and do put ugly faces on otherwise good-looking people, a fact propaganda photographers have been milking for _decades_. Lily will always be the prettier Evans sister, but Petunia is far from actually ugly. On the outside, at least.)

_POP._

Ah. It seems that now I've got magic I can disapparate. I'm now in the Dursley's bedroom, treated to the horrible grunting snores of the fat fuck and the sight of Petunia rolled right to the edge of the marital bed. Frame it as an oil painting and call it 'portrait of an unhappy marriage'.

I flow like smoke in through her mouth and nose. Oh dear. She's having a naughty dream. I'm pretty sure Tom Selleck can do better, to be brutally frank. I leave her to her pedestrian fantasies of Magnum, PI, and throw off the covers to get out of bed.

The immediate sense of straight-up _wrongness_ stops me in my tracks as soon as I've got to my borrowed feet. Next time I offer my sympathies to someone with gender dysphoria it's going to _mean something_. Nothing's quite where I expect it to be, and some things _aren't there at all_. It's like driving a rental car with the seat adjusted wrong. I thank my lucky stars I'm possessing Petunia at the _right_ time of the month; there are things Man Was Not Meant To Know. While I'm able to cope with it after a minute or so of mental adjustment, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to be able to do this long term. Not without storing up a pretty major wig-out for some unspecified future date. Even if I could, if Petunia starts acting like a complete and utter _bloke _people are going to notice. I'm not that good an actor and in as much as I have a feminine side she's definitely on the Ladies' Rugby end of the great spectrum of femininity. (A kind of woman I have all the time in the world for, and not just because most of them could take me in a bar fight.)

A quick dig in Petunia's memories of last night shows me where she's laid out today's outfit and oh dear me, _really?_ I don't care to take the time to pick something else, so it seems I'm wearing a mauve crimplene trouser-suit today. The eighties: the Decade That Taste Forgot. Harry better appreciate the sacrifice, is all I'm saying. Bright side: I'm going to be cleaning up piss and blood in this outfit, I can justify taking it out in the back garden and burning it afterwards. I grab the clothes and head for the bathroom to wash and brush up for the day: Petunia smeared some concoction from Avon on her face last night and the need to wash it off is getting overwhelming. And the less said about the curlers in the hair the better. How the _hell_ do women sleep with those things in?

It's probably good that Petunia's asleep and still dreaming, she'd probably chuck a fit at the way I apply my own standards of ready-for-the-day. The curlers come out and I scrape back a ponytail that's only about half a notch short of a full-on Croydon Facelift, then a quick standing wash at the sink before I get dressed. She's a make-up every day kind of woman, but the chances of me getting _that_ right are zero, so I skip it. She's probably going to get aerated over the fact that I've seen her naked, too. _Tough shit,_ _Petunia, I wouldn't be doing this if I could trust you not to abuse your children._

I'm alive to the ethical problem, obviously, but in a choice between the bodily autonomy of one mean-spirited shrew and the welfare of the two children she's abusing? Not difficult. And if there was a universal rule that said 'Thou Shalt Protect Children From Abuse Regardless Of The Personal Discomfort Of Their Abusers' I'd be completely OK with it. There. Categorical Imperative satisfied, unquiet shade of Immanuel Kant told to bugger off because you've to cut your ethical coat to suit your situational cloth. I turn the taps on to have a bath ready for Harry. He's going to need it.

_Really_ going to need it. A stop in the kitchen to grab a bin-bag from under the sink (no need to plunder Petunia's memories, the bin bags are _always_ under the sink) and I open the cupboard door to a truly impressive stink. He hasn't just wet the bed and bled all over it, somewhere in the course of that nightmare and attempted possession he went for the Triple Threat. The piss and shit aren't a problem - well, beyond the obvious - but I mutter a silent thanks to whoever's watching over him that he didn't choke on that vomit. Accidental magic, maybe?

Whatever. "Harry? Wake up, our kid. You've had an accident and we need to get you cleaned up."

The sound of Petunia's voice startles him awake like a belt from a truck battery. That look of fear in his eyes has me damning the Dursleys to the Special Hell all over again.

"Harry, it's Mal." I try and project as powerful an air of me-ness as I can. "I'm doing ghost magic to use Petunia like a puppet." Not sure how else to explain possession to a five-year-old who doesn't properly know about magic yet.

"Mal?" Harry looks me in Petunia's eyes and they suddenly _glow_. A deep, rich, sunlight-in-a-woodland-glade green. _You, my lad, are going to grow up an absolute moral hazard to girls if we get you contacts instead of NHS spectacles._

A look of worry comes over his face. "I don't want to hurt girls!"

"You won't, Harry, it's a joke you're not old enough to understand. You can tell it's me in here, can't you?"

Harry nods. _Accidental magic legilimency,_ and may this run of good luck continue. Hopefully it's not from Tom, or if it is he's only got the talent and nothing else.

He makes to sit up and suddenly stops, wide eyed. "Oh, no!"

"I know, Harry. We're going to get you cleaned up - no, don't put your hand in it. Come here and I'll carry you up to the bath so we don't get any of it on the carpet."

"But I'm all over sick and wee and, and…" he stutters to a halt in shame and worry and utter mortification.

"I know. But I've borrowed Petunia so I can do Daddy stuff in the real world too, and that means not minding that you need a good scrub. So, c'mere, Harry." I hold out my arms.

"I'm sorry," he says as I pick him up with a grunt of effort. _Fuck's sake, Petunia, an exercise class or two wouldn't have fucking killed you._ _It's the eighties, aerobics is totally a thing._

"Don't you worry, Harry," I tell him as I get him arranged so nothing falls out of his pyjama pants, a sort of bridal-carry arrangement. The bagginess is working in his favour right now, it's keeping the mess off his poor skin. "I've been a Daddy three times over, this is far from the worst I've had to clean up."

"Didn't their Mummy do that?" Seems Harry hasn't ever seen Vernon do a hand's turn around the house. Despite, you know, fucking living here, the useless ringpiece.

"Sometimes. But _proper_ daddies do their share so their children know that daddy cares."

We get to the bathroom and I kick the bath-mat out of the way. What's about to happen needs to happen on the lino for obvious reasons. Fortunately Harry's a few years off developing body modesty, so I get him undressed and in a nice hot bath without any fuss. "Have a splash about while I sort this out, Harry. Or start washing yourself, if you know how. The soap and flannel are right there. Be careful with your forehead, that cut has opened up a bit."

Memo to self: get Vernon on to having a shower fitted. A soak in the bath is all very well, just the ticket sometimes, but showers are more convenient and economical and there's going to be two teenage boys in this house over the summer before too long. Why this hasn't already been done I have no idea: getting an electric shower fitted was a massive fad in the seventies as I recall.

Getting the poo scraped down the loo and the pyjamas bagged up - they're probably a dead loss, and Harry's due a shopping trip - is the work of a moment. Repairing Petunia's manicure might represent more of a challenge, but it's not my problem. Her memories tell me there's a box of Dudley's old clothes in the box-room - the one Dudley thinks of as his second bedroom - and I should be able to find something for Harry to wear in there. I go get the box and come back to find Harry sorting himself out like a little trooper. _Take that, Petunia, your attempts to beat him down taught him self-reliance._

I make sure he's got the soap and flannel everywhere, get some gauze out of the medicine cabinet to clean around where his scar has opened up, help him with shampoo and rinsing because the last thing he wants is soap in an open cut, which I know from personal experience fucking _wrecks_ \- and lift him out to towel off. "Vernon and Dudley are sleeping in because it's Saturday, so we can go make breakfast and eat it in front of the telly."

"Won't Uncle shout?" Harry frets as I rummage through the old-clothes box.

I give him my best bring-it-on grin. "I'll shout back _worse_. He's expecting Petunia, but it's really Mal, and I've got the magic from gobbling up that bad ghost, so I can make him sit down and shut up and be told what's what."

"Brilliant!" Harry's a little savage at heart, as all small children are. He'll have to be taught better, of course, but for now I haven't the heart to stop him revelling in it a bit. Thoughts of magic revenge keep him cooperative while I'm getting him dressed - Dudley's stuff from last year is a bit baggy, but serviceable, and there's a pair of buckle-up shoes just like ones I had at Harry's age that fit him quite well. Not much growing room in them, so we're going to have to find the nearest branch of Clarks before school starts.

I also take a comb to the trademark Harry Potter hair, while it's still damp from being washed and towel-dried. Turns out that it behaves itself if you treat it kindly. It could be accidental magic again, of course, responding to the care and attention with contented compliance. I take a moment with scissors and sticking-plaster to butterfly the opened scar closed and then tape a gauze pad across it in case it seeps. Harry doesn't complain even though it pretty obviously stings. That sense of malignity the scar had the other night? Gone entirely. _Fuckin' score!_

"Are you going to be Aunt Petunia forever, Mal?" Harry has clearly been thinking about this while I was putting the box of clothes away and leading him down to the kitchen. He asks the question in a tone of fascinated horror, as well he might.

"No, I don't think so. I'm not very good at pretending to be a girl, so once we've got everyone fed and things cleaned up I'll go be Uncle Vernon for a bit. That means we can use the car and get stuff done around here. I'll be making sure Aunt Petunia behaves, and hopefully they'll both learn to be nicer people."

Harry adopts an expression of scepticism about this last thing.

"Uncle is also going to find that he and Dudley are on a diet from now until they look like human beings. That and exercising. You need feeding up a bit, and then we'll get you exercising too. Growing up big and strong is _important_." Turns out if you encourage little boys enough they actually do that. The shorter of my sons was six foot four and both of them were built like brick shithouses, very handy when I needed heavy objects lifted and moved. I used to tell them it was why I paid all those gym fees if they complained about getting press-ganged into moving furniture.

I take the cot mattress out of the cupboard under the stairs and carefully move it and the bag of soiled pyjamas out into the back garden to be dealt with later, and hit the whole interior of the cupboard with spray cleaner so it'll keep until after breakfast. Harry waits while I pop upstairs for a change of clothes - Vernon and Dudley still dead to the world at half past eight, the slugs, and I turn the alarm off to keep them that way - and change in the bathroom after draining the bath, putting things back tidy and scrubbing my hands as near surgical standards as I can get. I haven't let my face show anything in Harry's presence, but doing a grotty job because you care doesn't actually make the job any less grotty.

"Am I not to sleep in the cupboard any more?" Harry asks when I get back down. I lift him up to sit on the kitchen sink draining board so he can watch me cooking.

"No, Harry, you're not. Tonight you're in the guest bedroom, and then we'll sort you out with your own room. Or we'll get bunkbeds so you and Dudley have a bedroom and a playroom to share. We'll only do that if Dudley learns to be a good boy, though." I'm taking a bit of a flying leap with this one: Dudley needs to learn to be part of a family rather than a yawning pit of greed, and Harry wants to be part of a family and having shared space with someone who he ought to have seen as a brother would do that. My boys lived that way up until the divorce when the big house had to go the way of all things and were thick as thieves as a result.

The look of hope on Harry's face tells me I got it right. It's a pity that Dudley's such a little aflliction for the time being, but one step at a time and all that. "Remember," I say, "we've got to teach Dudley to be as good a boy as you, so I want you to set a good example. Savvy?"

"Savvy!" Harry nods like he's going to nod his head clean off.

"Now, pay attention to what I'm doing while I'm cooking. This is an important skill for young gentlemen to learn. You'll have your own place some day so you'll need to know how to cook for yourself. And when you're old enough to be interested in girls, cooking for them is a great way to get them interested in _you_. Now: scrambled eggs. The trick with these is cooking them slooooooowly, which is why we get them started _first _..."

It takes us half an hour to get four plates of breakfast - scrambled eggs and bacon on toast, sensible portions - and two of them in the oven to keep warm. I have to rummage in Petunia's memories to find out how to work the gas oven: I hadn't seen one in decades by the time I died. It seems to be sitting down in front of Saturday Superstore to eat off our knees that's the final straw for Petunia, who I've been vaguely aware has been awake since halfway through making breakfast but has been too confused to make her presence felt up to now.

_**NOT ON MY UPHOLSTERY!**_

**Oh shut up, you dreadful muggle fishwife. You're already filthy, what's more dirt?**

I can't help but smile - Harry's on the hearthrug, enraptured with the first actual meal of his own he can remember _and_ seeing the pictures that go with the noise of the telly for the first time ever - and I've got the Tom And Petunia show to make me laugh.

_Keep it down to a dull roar, you two. Petunia, you're currently possessed by the spirit of a decent human being. This is temporary, I'll be moving over to Vernon when he gets up, which will save us all having to listen to him complaining about the size of his breakfast. Don't bother protesting, there's nothing you can do about it, and it's for your own good anyway._

**Oh, sophistry! And you call **_**me**_ **the villain of the piece…**

_Nothing sophistical about it at all, Tom. Everyone's happier when they're living their best lives, and that's what I'm going to give them, whether they like it or not._

**Ah! 'For the Greater Good!' Isn't that carved over the gate of Nurmengard?**

_I believe so. Difference is, Gellert and Albus believed they were superior because they had magic. At the risk of damning myself with faint praise, I know I'm superior to Mr. and Mrs. Dursley regardless of magic. They are not my inferiors by lack of magic, but because they are completely irrepressibly ghastly and awful in every possible way. You could give them all the magic of Merlin and they'd still be terrible people. Just like you, Tom. _

**They and I are NOTHING ALIKE! **

He seems to have missed the reference to Dumbledore's shady past. He's either too angry to care or already knows. I'll find out when I eat the relevant memories. _You forget I know you as well as you know yourself, Tom. Humdrum evil, operatic evil, it's all still evil and putting a wand in your hand made you no better a man. It just opened you to more temptations. You could fling a half-brick over the wall of any Category B Prison in the land and it'd bounce off three better people than any of the three of you before it hit the ground._

I firmly quash Tom - it's ultimately my mind that's doing the Tom thinking, and it doesn't do to let that sort of thing get out of hand.

Petunia, alas, I have no such control over.

**WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? LET ME GO AT ONCE!**

_I'm a spirit. An instrument of divine agency. And, no. You gave up your chance to have a say when you started mistreating your children._

**I ONLY HAVE ONE CHILD! **It's all I can do not to facepalm. If missing the important point was an Olympic sport she'd be Britain's shining hope of a gold medal.

I don't know if it's her emotional state or the fact that I'm right next to the source that makes her so loud, but the tone is actually getting on my wick far more than the content. Which is to say I already knew she was a nasty cow, but I _really_ don't need the yelling.

_Lily sends her regards._

**What?**

_Oh, so you _can _communicate in less than a shriek. Good to know. Now, in mortal life I was a gentleman, a professional, and a father to three children. And, for all my mistakes, I was a better parent on my worst day than you've ever even tried to be, and while I was on the other side I gave Lily my word that I'd sort things out around here. _This is, strictly speaking, a lie, but it's easier than telling the whole damn story and explaining about the relationship between spirits, magic, time and causality, which on the evidence is far from absolute, not that I understand all that much anyway. _So things are going to improve for those two little boys - Dudley won't like it at first, but he's going to grow up a criminal at the rate you're going - and you're going to shut up and take it._

**But Vernon -**

_Vernon doesn't get a say either. Not least because I'm moving over to him when he gets up, like I told you. He'll be doing better at his job, better around the house, better as a father, and he'll be losing weight and taking regular exercise. It'll actually look like you have a decent husband for the first time in years._

The disappointment and resentment she harbours for the way Vernon turned out is a palpable thing, so telling her this is by way of carrot. An apparently magical solution to the problem that doesn't involve putting rat poison in his morning tea - she's considered it, because for some reason she considers murder less shameful than divorce - isn't actually that hard a sell.

**You don't expect me to -**

_NO!_ The half-formed question came with an image of the last time Vernon talked her into a bout of the ol' conjugals. The only use of which is telling me his cardiovascular health is in _really_ shit order: if Petunia had actually wanted it she'd have been a very disappointed woman. _While I'm probably better at that too, fucking the wife of the man I'm possessing is a line I don't propose to cross._ The Imp of the Perverse bids me add: _You can make your own decision about the improved model Vernon that'll be left behind when I'm done with him._

I sense her about to protest the size of the breakfast I'm putting down her neck, and quell her with a dump of facts and figures about human health and nutrition, the role of exercise in healthy weight management, and a pithy observation or two regarding the state of her health as observed from the inside. I can tell that my time with this family is going to involve me administering a _considerable_ helping of Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah.

It's while we're finishing washing up the breakfast things - Harry stands on a chair to watch and learn, and also handle the important responsibility of putting plates in the drying rack - that I hear movement upstairs.

"The drying up can wait, Harry," I tell him, "When your Uncle Vernon comes down I'm going to move from Petunia in to him, so don't be scared when you see that happen. I'll probably be Uncle Vernon most of the time, because I'm better at being a man, and being him will let me use the car."

Harry takes the weirdness in stride. It's not like he knows any different, he's spent most of his time in that bloody cupboard after all. I feel a twinge of the shame that Petunia feels. _Oh, so you have a conscience after all._

Vernon comes down in his pyjamas and dressing gown - fair play, it _is_ the weekend - and tries to assert himself. "Petunia, why - urk!"

I notice that this business of hopping from one to the other is a lot easier than Tom found it, because he had the inconvenience of having to manage his own body as well as someone else's. I just sort of … zip across. The magic makes me faster in spirit form along with everything else.

Looking back at Petunia, she seems a bit staggered at suddenly having to pilot her own body again. She's taken no harm: it's only willing possessions that corrupt the host. "Vernon?" she asks, her voice quavering. Only natural she's afraid, of course.

"Told you I'd be taking over Vernon," I tell her in as soothing a tone as I can muster. "Put the kettle on, lass, I'll get my own breakfast out. Oh, and no sugar, I'm sweet enough already and Vernon can't afford the calories. Harry, you go and watch telly for a bit while I talk to your Aunt Petunia." Harry scampers with a massive grin on his face. When I try and move I discover I'm short of breath, and apparently some tosser has turned up the gravity in here. "How does he live like this?" I ask of the world in general.

Petunia's nose wrinkles. "I _did_ tell him he needed to lose weight, but he insisted that he had years yet to worry about that."

I check Vernon's memories. I don't know if he knew he was deluding himself, but he seems to have had hold of the idea that the school and university boxing and rugger meant he was fit for life, despite not having practised either in nearly ten years. From the looks of his family - a miserable shower, of whom Marge is the worst - he's got the genes for being a great big beefy brute of a man, and was when he and Petunia met. He just doesn't have the willpower to maintain it. "I'll get in to see the GP during the week for a dietitian referral, this is going to take an _expert_ to fix."

Just bending down to get the breakfast I made out of the oven is a serious undertaking. It's dried out a bit and the eggs have gone rubbery, but it'll do for blood sugar until dinnertime. I don't hear any complaint from Vernon about the thought of skipping meals. Tom's experience is that most hosts experience the whole thing as a dreamlike state: it takes a strong willed host to make himself heard by the possessor. Vernon doesn't have the will to refuse second helpings, so I don't anticipate any trouble from him.

When Petunia sets down a mug of tea - a quick skim over her thoughts reassures me there's no rat poison in it - and sits down at the kitchen table with me, it piques my curiosity. "You're taking this rather better than I expected, Mrs. Dursley?"

"Did… did you really speak to Lily? On the other side?" There are actual tears in her eyes. Unshed, starting to brim. I may have only walked a few yards in her shoes, and a few paces in Vernon's, but I'm getting some understanding. They're dim, small-minded people who are afraid of how big the world really is and they've been touched by the fringes of one of the scariest parts of it. This doesn't excuse _anything_ they did to Harry, but it does explain the motive behind their reprehensible choices. And tells me there actually is capacity for improvement in Petunia at least. Vernon, for the moment, abides the question on that score. It may help a bit that I've got to them six years before they become the arseholes depicted in the books, of course.

I'm going to have to feed her a bit of a line over this, because the truth involves either literal gods or the bizarre hallucinations of a dying brain, I'm still not _fully _decided which. "Only briefly, Petunia. Only briefly. There aren't really words for how it is in the beyond, so the only part that makes sense in mortal terms is when I passed through the moment of her death on the way to this precise moment here and now. If it helps, she stood firm to the last against the bastard that murdered her, and I gave her my word in …" I pause to pick up my tea. That moment is still vivid in my thoughts and dropping to bits over it won't help. A deep breath, some throat clearing and a sip of my brew covers the near thing I just had. "In honour of her courage. And her husband's courage: the swine only got to Lily over his dead body. I've already told Harry that his parents died as heroes, and you won't be contradicting that. Say you don't know the story and send him to me if you feel you can't talk to him about it."

She nods. Dumbstruck for the moment, tears falling. Why didn't Dumbledore tell her any of this? I've seen her memories of the letter he left with Harry - take a moment to cross-check them against Vernon's - and it was terse to the point of insult on the subject of her sister's death. It also harped on the theme of hiding Harry, which is how the cupboard-under-the-stairs and not-allowed-out-of-the-house bullshit started. That 'Lily sends her regards' was an act of spite on my part, in all honesty. That it seems to be a spur to Petunia's conscience makes me feel a _lot_ better about it, and grateful for the good luck.

She collects herself over the course of her cup of tea. "I'd better get Dudley up and fed. And fix my face and hair, you made a complete mess."

I shrug. "I lived my whole mortal life as a man, so I never needed to learn the how of all that stuff. Also, I was in a hurry. Harry suffered an attack last night, which caused his poor little body to lose control and caring for him took priority. We're lucky he didn't inhale any of that vomit and choke. He's had a bath, but the cupboard will need deep cleaning before we can go back to using it for storage."

"Attack?" _Is that genuine concern on your face, Petunia?_

"Yes. I've been here in spirit form for a while, you see, watching over Harry and whispering comforting things to him in his despair." I pause a moment to relish the look of horrified guilt on Petunia's face as she realises I've seen her dealings with him. _And well you might feel guilty, you utter, utter, disgrace of a human being_. "He had a bad nightmare last night, along with some kind of seizure. He doesn't consciously remember the night his parents died, but he was right there in the room where Lily was killed so it comes to him in dreams. I went into his dream to try and help, comforting words if nothing else, and a malign spirit took the chance to follow me in. That scar? It had an evil spirit in it. Your sister, who seems by all accounts to have been a very useful young witch, laid protections on Harry that stopped it even _trying_ to do him any harm until last night."

"The- H- Harry's all right, isn't he? There's no more danger?"

I grin. It turns out Vernon's face isn't suited to the slasher-smile I want for this, too many chins and a lot more moustache than I'm used to, but I do what I can with it. "The nasty little bleeder was expecting a frightened child. What he got was _me_. He won't be any trouble any more."

"You … killed it?"

"And ate him. Which sounds barbaric, but it's how these things go." Extrapolating from a sample size of _one_, here, but I'm working with what I've got. "His power is now part of mine, so I'm a more effective protector for Harry, and by extension you and Vernon and Dudley. Now, that's not to say the threat is _entirely_ past. The spirit was a fragment of the criminal wizard who killed Lily, and he and his followers are still out here. Keeping quiet about Harry's heritage like young Mr. Dumbledore asked you to will help, of course, although we can let Harry in on the secret now, as soon as the time seems right. Despite everything he's a sensible little boy, but refer any questions to me, please. I've got more experience in managing information."

"What do I call you? Can Vernon hear me in there?"

"Vernon feels like he's dreaming all this. He's not as strong willed as you, so he won't wake up like you did. And while my name is Malcolm, Mal to my friends, don't get used to calling me that. I'm the ace in the hole when it comes to protecting Harry, giving my presence away would defeat the purpose." I finish up my tea, stand, and lean as far forward over the table as Vernon's gut lets me. "If you'd treated Harry decently, either of you, you'd never even have known I was here."

"What do we do now?"

I've been thinking this over all morning, and don't have any definite conclusions yet. "For now, one day at a time. I'll take the time to come up with a long term plan while we get this household ship-shape and let you know accordingly when I've decided. For today, you've got three tasks. First, deep clean the cupboard, the soiled bedding and pyjamas are out on the patio and probably a write-off. Harry's moving in to the guest room tonight, Marge won't be visiting again until Christmas. He'll need a room of his own, so the second task is sorting out all the stuff we've got stacked in the smallest bedroom. Once it's cleared out we can furnish it for Harry. The third task is the most important, and it'll probably stop you making much progress on the other two. Dudley needs to improve, a lot. The bottom step is now the naughty step, and every time he tries to bully you, dump him on it and tell him he's not leaving it until he's sat still for five minutes. Don't let him anger you, be firm and calm. He'll probably have a complete meltdown, just let it blow itself out and keep your cool the while. I'll be working on him myself starting tomorrow, but Harry and I will be out most of the day shopping today. Clothes mostly, and some books so I can get him started reading before school starts. And remedial work for Dudley, I won't be accepting a school report like the last one. It might have done for Vernon, but I hew to higher standards than that."

"You're spending our money?" There's a sharp note to Petunia's voice over that.

"Come Monday, I'll be going out to earn it, too. And I rather suspect I'm better at finances than Vernon; with his salary and this mortgage, you shouldn't be even mildly struggling. As for spending it, the childrens' needs come first, including making up for the neglect you visited on Harry. Which neglect, Petunia, is why you aren't permitted to complain about me fixing the problem. You _know_ I could make this so much worse for you."

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

The bit about memory modification in the disclaimer? I stand by that. We are the sum of our experiences, after all, and an immortal wizard who can literally _change who people are_ is, while not unstoppable or all-powerful, deeply bloody dangerous. The only fanfic I know that shows someone taking the piss on the scale that you can with this particular magic is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by LessWrong. In among all the things I dislike about that fic - mostly matters of personal taste - that was a truly brilliant turn of plot that I won't spoil. I've retconned that ability out of Voldemort's hands for this fic because, bluntly, if I left the main villain with a nuclear weapon I'd be sore tempted to have him use it.

Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah: the original latin proverb is 'Mens sana in corpore sano' - a healthy mind in a healthy body - but the version here is the title of a Victoria Wood comedy series from the 80s (1989, I just looked it up) which starred, among others, Julie Walters. Molly Weasley to most of you. I daren't go back and watch it again - comedy ages dreadfully - but I remember it as hilarious.

Finally, I've never been able to find a source for it - it's certainly not in the books - but a number of fan resources have it that Petunia arranged the Potters' burial at Godric's Hollow. Which I find implausible to start with - you'd need a team of obliviators to cover everything up to the point where death certificates could be issued (a legal requirement to bury anyone) and stop the coroner taking an interest, which immediately blows the secrecy of Harry's placement from the wizarding world _and _involves a whole raft of agencies on the muggle side with regard to Harry's placement, to include regular social-worker visits. Nothing in the books says it _didn't_ happen that way with the social workers stopping their visits before Harry could become aware of them, but the scene where Harry's dropped off doesn't include any of what it ought to to suggest that it _did_.

Even if the responsibility of Lily's burial was dumped on Petunia, she's _exactly_ petty enough to refuse any role in James's funeral, not least because in her eyes he got her sister killed. The Potters would be buried in different places, and Lily's gravestone would probably have the surname 'Evans' on it with an epitaph that slyly implies James killed her. A joint grave with a tasteful monument and a hopeful christian epitaph? Petunia had _nothing_ to do with that.

So I've gone with Petunia getting a next-of-kin notification in Dumbledore's letter left with Harry and then silence, but that, and the consequences, are for a later chapter.

Fic recommendation: The entire body of work by Silently Watches on FFN. The one-shots and Faery Heroes I have no hesitation in recommending to everyone. The Black Queen series, while superb, is very much not for everyone, since it deals with some appallingly grim themes and there are maybe two or three characters in it who _aren't_ morally repugnant, merely morally compromised. Brilliantly written, just … challenging as to content. Silently Watches is where I first encountered the style of disclaimer I've been using, and may even have invented it.


	6. In which a start is made

Disclaimer: Do we see Dumbledore use mind control and conjured gin - which he implicitly compels her to drink - to procure a muggle's compliance, leaving her drunk in charge of a childcare facility when he dismisses her? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

Announcement: I'm working on Chapter 13 at the time this is posted. Since I keep having ideas while I'm writing - doing this for fun, after all, and am not restrained by editor nor publisher - the tale is growing considerably in the telling.

* * *

CHAPTER 6

"_...Harry and I will be out most of the day shopping. Clothes and school things, mostly, and some books so I can get him started reading before school starts. And remedial work for Dudley, I won't be accepting a school report like the last one. It might have done for Vernon, but I hew to higher standards than that."_

"_You're spending our money?" There's a sharp note to Petunia's voice over that._

"_Come Monday, I'll be going out to earn it, too. And I rather suspect I'm better at finances than Vernon; with his salary and this mortgage, you shouldn't be even mildly struggling. As for spending it, the childrens' needs come first, including making up for the neglect you visited on Harry. Which neglect, Petunia, is why you aren't permitted to complain about me fixing the problem. You know I could make this so much worse for you."_

-oOo-

Getting ready for the day drives home to me that, at this level, obesity really is a disability. Obesity coupled with a level of fitness that isn't even up to a second round of golf in a day makes even getting socks on a challenge. Used as I am to being at least within hailing distance of reasonable shape, Vernon's body feels like it's about to _die_. In Vernon's body, I can't imagine I'm getting much change out of 20 stone and he thinks he's five foot ten. My mental arithmetic isn't up to BMIs, whatever they're worth, but whatever a healthy weight is for this body, this is not it.

The fitness level underneath the obesity is shocking, too: he's thirty one years of age, and I was in better shape at fifty. That's the _real_ problem, of course. It's quite possible to be fit and healthy with a lot of body fat. There are whole categories of athletes that are just like that - strongmen, wrestlers of all kinds, and weightlifters - and they have to eat a lot to keep it up. Point is, they exercise, and Vernon doesn't, and hasn't in ten years, the arse.

As a result, getting ready for the day, which I'm used to doing in under ten minutes - shower and shave included - takes nearly half an hour. By which time Dudley is _already_ on the naughty step.

"It's worse than I thought," I say to Petunia as I step carefully around him. Carefully because if I fall in this body I'd crush the boy to death, more than likely.

"He ate his breakfast and wants cake for afters," she tells me. "And he's upset that the - that Harry is allowed to watch television. I told him that you've said he's to lose weight and that Harry is to be part of the family now, and he threw a tantrum."

"I see." I compose Vernon's face into the best 'Daddy is very cross with you' I can manage with the material to hand. He's no looker and scowls a lot and - to his credit - has a very good moustache for bristling. I turn around to look straight at Dudley, who is banging his head against the newel post and making a sort of gulping, whooping attempt at fake tears. "Dudley. Eustace. Dursley."

Yeah, I'd've insisted on Big D, too.

The shock - he's probably never had the all-three-names thing before, and I don't think Vernon has Dad Voice at all - actually shuts him up. "You will stay on the naughty step until you start being a good boy."

"But-"

"NO! It is time to start learning how to be a young _gentleman."_ I go on in that vein for the rest of his five minutes, and a bit beyond. I'm very much winging it with the poor kid: since for all her faults my ex-wife was also pretty good with kids (we both were, just dreadful with each other) we never had more than the occasional blow-up out of our three before they turned into stroppy teenagers. A kid who'd flat-out been taught to misbehave to the point of being rewarded for it? I foresee some trial and error ahead for Petunia and me. I didn't look too hard at her childhood, but she and Lily seem to have started out fairly well-adjusted: Vernon's the problem here. He was raised by remarkably tight-arsed authoritarians, and I'm kind of sad for him that the day he was packed off to Smeltings was one of the happier ones of his childhood. He went on to do all the wrong things to get over that, what with being, frankly, a bit dim.

As it is, the end of the lecture sees Dudley silent, sitting meekly with a trembling lower lip. I offer him a hand to get up. "That's better," I say, "Now you and I are both going to be having no second helpings and no sweets or cakes until we're properly healthy. No use crying or screaming or trying to fight. I'm going to take Harry out now to go shopping for clothes and you can watch telly while we're out. Mummy won't give you any snacks or sweets, and you're going to try and not be angry, Dudley. Do you understand?"

A meek nod.

"Now go hug your mummy and tell her you're sorry," I tell him, and to my surprise he actually does it, and goes off to join Harry in front of Saturday Superstore.

Petunia is quite wide-eyed. I crook an eyebrow at her.

"That…" she sort of gestures vaguely.

I'd shrug, but I'm not sure it'd be visible under the lard. "He'll have forgotten in an hour or so and you're going to have to do it again. Tiresome, but you're an adult and have patience, so use it. Eventually we'll basically train good behaviour into him and he'll be less work. Oh, and just so's we're clear, Dudley needs a healthy diet and good exercise habits, not to lose weight as such. I know you've got a thing about fat, but that's not Dudley's real problem. Keep the sugar and junk food out of him and he'll be fine, so long as we can get him up and moving."

She nods. I reckon I'll probably have to have more words with her about this, but one step at a time. "When you got him to calm down like that, that wasn't, you know…? " she waves her hands with waggling fingers in lieu of saying the dreaded m-word.

I can't help it: I snort with laughter. "Just years of practise. When I died, my youngest had just had her 21st birthday. We never let any of them get as bad as Dudley there, so I'm busking a bit, but a firm tone and an air of authority gets you a long way with kids. Springing it on him like this probably added some shock value."

She sighs in relief. "I was worried you'd - do, do that _thing_ you're doing to Vernon."

"That wouldn't be right. Look, without help, Vernon's not going to see his fiftieth birthday, and he's going to make you, Dudley and probably a whole lot of other people miserable until then. Harry's my main charge in all this - I'm not allowed to tell you what's really going on," _Mostly because I've only the vaguest fucking notion myself,_ "but Vernon's going to be spending at least a few months dreaming while I run things for him because fixing Vernon is my best route to getting things right for Harry."

"I suppose - I suppose it's for the best, then."

"I sincerely hope so. I'm not all-knowing and all-seeing, though, so be warned I may well make mistakes here and there. But my aim in all this is to fix this home and family for Harry's sake. And so's we're clear: you need to get over yourself on the subject of magic and wizards. Harry doesn't need to be told anything until he either works it out for himself or starts with accidental magic, but it _is_ going to be a factor in all this. I appreciate you felt dreadful that Hogwarts wouldn't take you, but that's buying into _their_ bullshit about how they're superior because they've got magic. Be better than that, Petunia, and I'll say no more about it."

She nods in acknowledgment, but I've seen too much of her mind to think she's ready to agree quite yet.

"If it helps, I really do have ethical limits in all this, and magically rewriting Dudley's personality is well beyond them. Besides, you need to practise decent parenting skills and you won't learn those if I just put the hoodoo on the boy, now, will you?" I give her a grin and, after a detour to secure wallet, keys, chequebook and what-have-you, go get Harry.

Saturday Superstore is just coming out of the cartoon segment, the animated version of Happy Days, and Harry is enraptured. They go into a bit where a bloke plays the trumpet underwater because children's television was completely _insane_ in the 1980s and I have to stop and watch _that_. Turns out it's Roy Castle, who hasn't died of cancer yet but _does_ have the power to get the Record Breakers theme song stuck in my head if I don't look sharp about it.

"C'mon, Harry," I say, "time to go get you some clothes and stuff. Bit of an adventure for you, a look at the big wide world."

Harry looks torn for a moment. He clearly wants to watch _all_ the television, but I'm offering an adventure out in the big wide world. He jumps up. He takes my hand when I offer it, but gingerly. He _knows_ its me but he's still scared of Vernon. We'll get there eventually, I suppose.

"Dudley, if mummy tells me you've been good while I'm out, I might bring back a treat. So be good!"

Dudley looks up and nods. He'll probably have forgotten in about ten minutes, I'm pretty sure any intelligence he develops is going to have to come from the nurture side of the equation, but it's worth a try.

Out in the car, I discover that Vernon seems to have thought booster seats were some kind of socialist plot, so the first stop is going to have to be the Halfords on the way in to Twickenham. Beyond that I'm drawing a bit of a blank for shopping in the area - I've only ever been to Twickenham for the rugby, and while I do know the shopping in Guildford having lived there for a year, I know it as it was in the early 90s. For all I know the retail park I'm thinking of hasn't been built yet. Vernon hasn't got clue one about clothes shopping, apparently Petunia handled all that via catalogues with the occasional day out on the train. The days of needing the car for a big weekly shop haven't arrived in the Dursley household yet so he doesn't even have more than a faint notion where the groceries come from.

Harry doesn't care: he's never been allowed in the car and this is a _massive_ adventure: if he was a puppy his tail would be a blur. While we're driving I decide we can add trains and the tube to the day's Exciting New Stuff For Harry: park at Richmond tube and travel that way to Brent Cross. I _know_ that's in business because I went there in '81 or '82. One of the first of the modern style of shopping centres, we should be able to get everything there. I've decided Harry's getting a bag full of sports-casual to be going on with. He'll be wearing his school uniform more than half the time and will probably have grown out of _everything_ in six months, so no sense blowing huge amounts on kitting him out. If I'm wrong about the impending growth spurt - it's been years since I had care of a boy this age, and memory is a fallible thing - then we can get another batch in the January sales.

After a stop to get a couple of booster seats - completely rubbish ones compared to what will be available in ten years' time, apparently the world didn't give a shit about children's automotive safety until the 90s - we cross the river to Richmond and park up to continue the process of blowing little Harry's mind with a ride on the tube. The traffic's less awful than I was expecting, but then my experience of London driving is nearly two decades in the future and a lot nearer the centre than this.

Most of the journey is taken up with explaining _everything_ because apparently Harry's urge to ask questions has built up a gigantic head of pressure. It seems it takes more than isolation broken only by 'shut up freak' to do that much damage to a kid with a good brain and a vivid imagination within hearing distance of a telly, or at least not in the time the Dursleys have had available.

Since I'm having to answer all these questions through a real throat now, I have to detour while changing trains to get drinks. And no, they don't sell bottled water at tube station news kiosks yet, cans of diet coke are the only option without a shitload of sugar in. Memo: find a sports shop and invest in a water bottle. I get Harry a bottle of chocolate milk, and show him how to drink it with two holes in the foil cap so he doesn't spill it on the train. Harry is _mightily _impressed that there is some actual science behind this technique.

The Northern Line doesn't look any less urban-decay than it did in the late 90s when it was my regular commute. Since the questions have dried up a bit by the time we get seats - we get lucky, especially for a change at Embankment on a Saturday in peak tourist season - I decide to get started on a quite important part of Harry's education.

"Harry," I say, "You've reached an age where, as a young gentleman, you should be learning an important part of your culture, and it's time we started. I was about your age when I learned this"

Big wide eyes, lots of nodding. Harry is _not_ going to miss _anything_.

"Right then, I give you: the Ying Tong Song." Vernon has a fairly usable baritone voice, and Harry goes through the usual stages of learning the Ying Tong Song: disbelief, giggling, helpless laughter, and joining in. We get four or five other passengers coming in on the choruses and one glorious bastard who can actually do the raspberry verse, which I could never quite manage and Vernon hasn't a hope with. The tourists range from baffled through vaguely afraid to mightily amused.

Which makes it _twice_ I've managed to get a Goon Show singalong going on London Transport, albeit the first one was over ten years from now on a section of the system that hasn't been built yet (I don't think.)

Harry had found the car and train rides mind-expanding. A couple of acres of shopping centre is nearly a bit much for the poor lad, but a sit down in the food court with a tray of junk food and a milkshake steadies him considerably. Forcibly reminding myself that it's _actually the eighties_ steadies _me_ down from amused mockery of the godawful eighties fashion parading about.

("No, Harry, all I need is a cup of tea, you enjoy your nuggets and chips. You see, I'm carrying all the nourishment I need in my big belly, like a camel in his hump. What's a camel? Why, it's a rare beast that eats mud, poos bricks, and has a triangular bumhole. Which is how Egypt got all them pyramids. Oh, you want the _sensible_ answer? How do you know that wasn't the sensible answer I just gave you? Oh, well spotted, you're going to make a great card player when you grow up.")

Harry gets a couple of bags of clothes - sports kit mostly, because little boys can and will wreck anything less durable - and is chuffed to little mint balls to be allowed to wear one of his new outfits out of the shop. Replica Arsenal shirt - his second choice, he'd wanted Man United but _fuck_ Man United - a pair of baggy shorts with miles of growing room, they're nearly _longs_ on him, and velcro trainers because _everyone_ wanted velcro trainers in the 80s. I know I did, and got some shitty off-brand ones that I was mortified to be seen in. It's a shame the shop didn't have Stoke City shirts, I could've got him a full set of kit for the team nicknamed "the Potters" and had him be too adorable for words. As it is he attracts much praise from passing little old ladies who tell him he's a brave little soldier to be marching about all walking wounded like that. And a couple of cheery old geezers who tell him "Up the Gunners!" which I have to explain to him.

There's a bookshop of a chain I straight up don't remember _at all_, probably because Borders and Barnes & Noble wiped out all the small chains, nearly did for Waterstones and Blackwells, and made all but the most specialist independents a thing of distant memory. I make sure we get a couple of Dr. Seuss omnibus editions, some basic ABC books and the complete Ladybird Peter and Jane series, which I'm surprised to learn are still a thing. I learned to read out of these, so Harry and Dudley should manage all right.

Harry wants to know if I've read _all_ of these books ("Nobody can read them _all_, Harry. But that's no reason not to _try_"). I tell him he can pick one for being a good boy, and it's the nearest he comes to a meltdown all day because _he doesn't know how to choose._ We do some narrowing down - he likes animals, big scary ones, and wants a book he might be able to read quite soon rather than one that might take a while - and go through the available stock on dinosaurs to pick out one with simple text about the usual suspects. There's a rack of Ordnance Survey maps by the counter and I grab the Explorer sheets for Surrey. I may be in the disagreeably-flat south but there should be some good hiking _somewhere_. God knows Vernon needs it.

Memo: get Harry to an optician pronto. Kids' glasses are still free on the NHS, there's no excuse for waiting until the school sends a note home, and he's going to have a devil of a time learning to read without. He's not blind without glasses, but definitely has trouble with small fiddly details.

We finish the day with a wander through Toys R Us, I think the only one in Britain this early. Harry picks a stuffed brontosaur (I think we're still in the years of the apatosaurus mistake, so I keep quiet about that) and I confess myself completely stuck for Dudley's treat - I'm pretty sure he hasn't behaved while we've been out, but seeing the treat he could have if he behaves _tomorrow_ might give him something to focus on. Trouble is, he's had piles and piles of wildly inappropriate shit bought for him, most of which he's ignored or broken, and I doubt he'll care for educational stuff until we've _seriously_ reshaped his attitude.

Harry gets it when I tell him that he should stick with his stuffed Brontosaur because Dudley won't want it like he will the far shinier Optimus Prime that I pick in the end, and Dudley isn't going to be given it if he's been naughty while we're out. Also, Optimus Prime is on the telly and a definite hero, so maybe he'll follow the heroic example? I can but hope.

It's only sheerest will that keeps Vernon's body on its feet on the way home. The man's fitness level would shame a ten-year coma patient.

-oOo-

Back in Little Whinging, Petunia is slumped at the kitchen table with a G&T and a slightly frazzled air. Dudley has, apparently, spent about half the day on the naughty step and only realised Mummy was serious when she threatened him with no lunch and no telly to go with the no snacks or sweets. Optimus Prime is staying in the boot of Vernon's car for the time being.

Dudley has spent the afternoon on the sofa feeling sorry for himself and watching Empire Strikes Back over and over on the Betamax Vernon was so proud of picking over the clearly-inferior VHS last year. Little Whinging's video library - is Blockbuster a thing yet? - has a poor selection in Betamax and Vernon has been blaming _them_ for not being as smart as him. I foresee Vernon's golf-club fund taking another hit in the near future to get the home entertainment options sorted out. Dudley's Smeltings fund won't be touched - it's in a school-fees endowment policy, so it pretty much can't be - but Vernon's game won't be improved by anything other than practise and losing the belly, so six grand's worth of space-age alloy clubs are a pure waste of money better spent elsewhere

Petunia has done cold collations for dinner because she didn't know when we'd be home. Vernon's portion is bigger than I need to shut up his grossly-overindulged need for blood sugar, so Harry gets a second helping and Dudley sulks when I tell him the only thing _he_ is allowed second helpings of is salad and vegetables. Long as it's not a tantrum, let him sulk. I notice Petunia's got a whole stack of diet books out - one of them _is_ the F-Plan, called it - and we idly chat over the possibility of Vernon using one of them. Which is to say Petunia raises the possibility and I take the opportunity to explain - while acknowledging there are some good recipes in F-Plan - the basics of healthy eating and the importance of exercise to her _again_, this time pitching the explanation at a level the boys can understand.

Hopefully they'll get the subtext: eat your greens and exercise if you want to grow up big and strong. Dudley thinks he's hearing it from his daddy and Harry _knows_ he's hearing it from his own personal friendly magic ghost, hence the hope.

I also take the opportunity to point out that Vernon's opposition to anything that might count as 'foreign muck' (he regards _onions_ as a borderline-exotic ingredient, for fuck's sake) is now a thing of the past. It has long been past time for England's eating habits to recover from the shipping restrictions of two world wars and while the rest of the country will take another couple of decades this household is going to _enjoy_ its meals. In suitable moderation, naturally.

Since they're in separate bedrooms Harry and Dudley get storytime on the sofa: Vernon's bulk is quite enough to keep Dudley from trying anything with Harry, and Scrambled Eggs Super - a personal favourite, and one I've nearly learned by heart, along with The Lorax - has both boys giggling in all the right places. Petunia puts Dudley to bed - she caves and reads him another story, which I don't say anything about because that's the kind of spoiling she _should _be doing - and I end up having to carry Harry up to tuck him in.

-oOo-

Vernon needs a bath - really _must_ look into getting a shower installed - so it's nearly nine by the time I join Petunia in the living room after getting myself a cup of tea. (Even if Vernon's health could stand nightcaps of the size he was accustomed to, his taste in mass-market blended whisky is execrable.)

"You're good with the boys," she remarks, pausing in her appreciation of _Riders_.

"Well, back when I was alive, I was a better father than I ever was a husband. Had a rough go of it myself as a kid, and rather wanted to do better." Not that there weren't a few false starts, like, but I got the hang of it quite well though I do say so myself.

"I didn't get to the spare room today." There's a note of challenge there: I think she's expecting me to react like Vernon might.

I shrug. "I said that more in hope than expectation. I've been watching long enough to know Dudley's a handful, and I'm pleasantly surprised you've made as much progress with him as you have."

Petunia snorts derisively. "Vernon was most of the problem, I'm sorry to say. He liked to indulge his little man, and wouldn't hear of him being disciplined. Thought he was too young."

"I've some sympathy with Vernon on that, actually. I can see his childhood memories in here, and while his parents didn't _mistreat_ either of their children, they were a right pair of humourless tartars who'd skin a louse for a ha'porth o' hide, There's a _reason_ he was barely on more than christmas-card terms with them for the last years of their lives, even leaving aside the way they favoured Marge in the will. Vernon knew he didn't want that for his own child, nor Marge for her nephew, they just didn't know any better way to go about it. Fortunately I do, and Vernon's still in here with no choice but to learn as we go."

"It sounds like you're saying Vernon is stupid." There's the hint of a building temper eruption in Petunia's voice. In their own fucked-up unhealthy way, the Dursleys do actually care for each other.

"I'm saying he was never taught, and was taught to distrust nearly everything and everyone that might have helped him learn. A sort of mental trap, if you will. It doesn't excuse the way he treated his family and himself, not hardly at all, but it does help to understand it." I mean, Vernon Dursley _is_ quite a stupid man - his ability to function in business tells me that Smeltings' fees are actually worth every penny, they put quite a high gloss on this particular turd - but it's clearly nothing I want to say aloud where Petunia can hear.

A long silence follows. Because Petunia is the smart one in this family, and can follow the chain of reasoning, her own mind will make her face up to the fact that she _doesn't have Vernon's excuses_. She was never taught that everything not generations-deep Home Counties English With The Right School Tie was inherently wrong, corrupt and immoral: she's a working class Staffordshire girl - Harold Evans was the senior Shop Steward for the mill he worked at from demobilisation to the day he died, and a die-hard of a Labour party that hadn't yet lost its way. He and Iris raised their girls by the motto of 'treat folk decent and you'll not go far wrong'.

If only Petunia hadn't lost that along with her accent.

I watch her face. _She bloody well knows it. _ I can only hope she doesn't have a breakdown of some sort.

"If it helps," I say after a while, "think of my arrival as giving you a chance for a fresh start. Live the way your mum would have wanted. I mean, if you want to keep getting your money's worth out of the elocution lessons, go ahead, but you really don't have to row in with the nosy old biddies at your Neighbourhood Watch meetings. Lot of miserable old trouts you're better off without. What the neighbours will say _does not matter._"

She starts crying and laughing and hiccuping all at once. "It's easier said than done, you know. I don't know about you, but Vernon likes everything respectable, and I was raised the same. Oh, we didn't have the fancy house and the good schools and all that, but we were clean and respectable. _Best foot forward_, mum used to say."

_Until the car crash and you had to bury them with Lily away at Hogwarts and no way to get in touch_, I think to myself, and you got a student grant to secretarial college and met Vernon and he gave you a whole different idea of what 'respectable' meant and you bought in to it because he had money to flash and a nice company car, you daft girl.

I've been nodding along as she pours her heart out. "Look, I understand that. My father was a builder," let's let her assume mud and wellies and not senior construction engineer, "and I worked my way up from that background to end up at a City of London law firm. I was head of the legal department at a fairly large corporation," again, let her assume big company rather than municipal authority, "by the time I retired. I know all about people who want to live the not-a-blade-of-grass-out-of-place life. The thing is, you don't have to live it in your own home. You don't even have to live it outdoors if you don't want to: the days when the villagers could ruin your life with gossip are long gone. Even the echo of it that still exists will be gone soon. Remember, I've been outside time, I know what the future holds for society and what you've been trying to live _is not it._"

Petunia looks like she could start crying all over again with relief at that. All of that curtain-twitching keep-up-with-the-Joneses bollocks, well, I never indulged but I imagine it's fucking exhausting to try and maintain day after day. I'm lying about it vanishing, of course, it just changes shape and adapts because deep down there's an irreducible minority of utter bastards who are tireless in dragging the rest of us down. It's possible to tell them to go fuck their hats, though, and once you've done that you discover that they're as powerless as they are petty.

After a long session of reassurance - I get a quite girlish giggle out of her by describing the neighbourhood game of one-upmanship as 'willy-waving' so I know I'm making progress - I remember to tell her to get both boys in for opticians appointments. I've seen through Harry's eyes in his dreams, and Dudley's having trouble reading so he might well need some help too. Petunia has reading glasses and I suspect Vernon should have had his eyes checked but for reluctance to be a 'four-eyed ponce'. Where was this vanity when he was going up a trouser size and a half every year?

I tell her I'll be putting Vernon to sleep and going out 'to make my rounds in the spirit world' and to see if I can find the spells Dumbledore put on the house.

"Are they safe?" she asks. Dumbledore vaguely mentioned 'protection' in his letter, but all the blather about secrecy and hiding led the Dursleys to assume that he meant security through obscurity.

"More than likely, although I have to say I haven't been able to detect them yet. I only know about them because I looked into the future and saw times when he mentions them, along with claiming they built on whatever your sister did to keep Harry alive. He's a _notorious_ bullshitter, though, so there's every possibility it's a massive bluff on his part. If they do exist I may end up having to do some discreet magic of my own to detect and measure them. The wizard I ate last night had some skills in that area, so I should be able to manage."

Petunia gives me a hard stare over the top of her reading glasses, reminding me why I want Vernon in to the opticians as soon as I can. Staring over the top of a pair of spectacles is one of _the_ most effective weapons in the arsenal of authority. "This magic you're going to do had better be discreet. I can only take not caring what the neighbours think so far, you know."

_Was that a joke, Petunia Dursley? We make progress, yes we do._ "It will be. Wizards have been hiding away for centuries, they've got quite good at making magic pass beneath notice. I'm not about to start parading about in a robe and wizard hat."

"See that you don't."

"I'll say again what I said this morning, though. You need to relax about magic: it's real and it's going to have an impact on your life whether you like it or not. Tearing yourself up about it is just going to add misery to the equation. Besides, that set of green fingers you've got? Probably how your family's magic comes out in you even though you could never use a wand." This is almost certainly bullshit - pretty sure it's something I saw in a fanfic once - but if it boosts Petunia's self-esteem then I've no scruples about using it.

"You think so?"

I shrug. "It's certainly plausible, although I've no idea how we'd prove it one way or another. It certainly seems unlikely that your parents could have both a witch and an entirely unmagical child, for all that the genetics of magic haven't been studied as far as I can tell."

Petunia looks pleased with that. So, mischief managed I suppose.

-oOo-

Putting Vernon to sleep is easy enough. He's not entirely convinced he's awake to start with, and his body is running on fumes. I lay Vernon down and get up, to a slight shriek from Petunia.

"You can see me?" I'm a bit surprised by this, I've got used to invisibility. Hopefully my form is indistinct as to details, because my clothes are in an evidence bag more than three decades into the future.

She nods. Clearly she can also hear me.

"Proves you've got at least _some_ magic, too. The likes of me are invisible to people without magic. Have a think about whether you want to look into that." A thought occurs to me, and I expend a little mental effort on occluding my mind. I've got Tom's memories of learning the formal discipline to go with his natural talent, and I've been flexing the skill in odd moments all day. "Still see me?"

"You vanished."

"Good, so long as I know that that's working properly, see you in the morning!" I pop in to check on Harry - out cold, as well he should be after a day like that - and then Dudley. (Mostly out of a sense of duty. He has a long way to go before he's a likeable child.) From there, out to the boundaries of the property, as far as I can discern them: fences and, at the front, knee-high box hedges. They're not necessarily on the actual surveyed property lines - hedges grow as they will and the guys who put fences up for a living aren't generally that fussy - but on a property this new they'll be within an inch or two.

I'm looking here for the spells on the time-honoured principle of the bleedin' obvious. Protection, like armour, goes between you and the threat. After a bit of nosing about I come to the conclusion that sensing magic must be a skill you have to work on, like perfect pitch if you're not one of the lucky few.

A dig in Tom's memories confirms that: it's apparently a standard part of cursebreaker training, and it helps with a few other jobs. The _problem_ is that it starts with being alive to bodily sensations as you react to magic, and only the very fortunate or dedicated manage to get good enough that they can actually see magic with their eyes. Tom never managed it, but did develop the ability to taste magic in the air, which he found gratifyingly snakelike, the creepy bugger.

**Must you add insult to injury? Name-calling? Bad enough you carried me around among swarms of dirty muggles, but now I have to listen to your foul mouth denigrating the -**

_If the next words out of you are "Great Lord Voldemort" I will devour the memory of every - _ have to think about it a moment - _every moment of triumph you ever enjoyed. You don't get to complain, failure. I won, you lost, that's an end of it. And what's so great about completely ignoring literal millennia of lore on the subject of Oracles and going off half-cocked like you did? You're lucky you didn't end up fucking your own mother._

**What? My mother -**

_You never read any of the greek myths, then? None of the stories about what comes of messing with oracles and prophecies and similar?_

**MUGGLE myths. **

_Seriously, Oedipus doesn't ring a bell with you?_

**Should it?**

_Bloody hell. What kind of school did you go to that missed the likes of that?_ I'm being unduly harsh on Tom, I know. While the more expensive schools insisted on a good grounding in Classics back then, I'm pretty sure that whatever institution taught the wards of Wool's Orphanage wouldn't have done. The three Rs, and they should count themselves lucky to get even that much: they'd only just stopped calling them Poor Law Schools when Tom went.

Curious - and thinking it might be helpful to look at how Tom was doing magic before he got a wand, I eat his childhood.

It takes a while for the disorientation of absorbing the memories to dissipate, but when it does -

_Holy shit, Tom._

**What now?**

_Your time at Wool's Orphanage. _Most of it is the strange and distorted stuff that childhood memories are made of - whatever magic makes memories the pin-sharp things you see in the Pensieve and in Tom's adult memories hasn't kicked in yet. But the widespread assumption that Tom had a rough time growing up takes a hearty kick in the sacks once I see it from _his_ perspective.

Precious few luxuries, a staff doing the best they could with the budget from the Board of Guardians - or was it the Borough Council by then? I can't remember the date of the change and Tom never knew - but the kids were kept clean, clothed, warm and fed and sent to the local school. Some of them even kept pets, if they could get odd jobs for pocket money. There was abuse, all right, but it was Tom doing the abusing. Where the other kids indulged in the usual friction and picked on each other where matron and the house-mothers couldn't see, Tom wanted to _hurt_ people.

If Hogwarts hadn't taken him away, something like the James Bulger or Edlington cases would have been the result, if I'm any judge. There's usually something that shoves a child criminal over the edge, generally not whatever the media get in a moral panic over, but _something_. Tom, however, was a wrong 'un from the get-go. Thus far the little bit of criminology that I learned takes me, and no further.

**Wool's orphanage?**

_Where you grew up._

**I don't remember it. I'm pretty sure it was some muggle shithole, but I've not thought about it in years.**

_Of course you don't remember it, I just ate your memories._

**No loss. I had to endure the muggles for a time before I began my rise. There is no value in remembering it.**

I suppress the unquiet shade - with a hope that he'll get quieter as I pull him more to pieces, for all that he's probably nothing more than my own mind reacting to the big chunk of foreign memory in it. The useful thing about Tom's childhood is that he actually remembers all the occasions when he did magic. He didn't _know_ it was magic, but it marked him as _special_ and the pleasure he took from that marks every episode.

A pleasure that, incidentally, he'd lost later in life as the toll of all the things he did - dark magic and just straight-up criminality - mounted up. Ordinary psychological case-hardening would do it, psychopaths start small and seek bigger and bigger thrills for approximately this reason. Then again, it _might_ be the cumulative effect of horcrux-making, but something about those things makes me nervous of examining the memories. When a virtually magicless spirit like I was until last night can sense the malignancy of a thing, you'd have to be an idiot not to take warning. If I absolutely _have_ to examine those things, it's going to have to wait until I'm a _lot_ more confident about remaining who I am despite the incorporation of a whopping great load of Tom-stuff. I'm certainly minded to be careful of the later memories, since there's a clear pattern of degradation in just the period where he was learning stuff.

As it is, I've now absorbed the techniques Tom used to move things - his control was good enough to tie knots strong enough to hang a rabbit from the rafters - and cast nonspecific curses of general misfortune, pain and injury on people. The moving things I've already got, of course, and Tom's early powers of mind control were much superseded by his later learning of legilimency and possession.

An hour or so of experimentation reveals that using Tom's tricks I can make my poltergeisting a lot more impressive. I try a few tests with things lying around the neighbourhood - if anyone sees, well, there's a breeze up. At a rough estimate, if I could have done it with just one hand at the end of a fully-extended arm, I can do it with telekinesis.

**It's actually a transfiguration.**

_Being actually helpful, Tom?_

**I'm bored. I can't have my magic back, so I want to enjoy it vicariously.**

_Well go on, then._.

**Transfiguration is the most primal of the higher magics. There is nothing between you and the world but your will, and your will brings the world in line with desire. By magic you permanently or temporarily change an object in its relationship with the platonic ideal of its current form, or attach it to other ideals and change its relation to the new ideal.**

_Platonic formalism was shot down in Aristotle's time, but go on…_

**As a branch of philosophy. As a magical theory it still has merit for teaching beginners. Like the progression from Galileo to Newton to Einstein. This is straight from Dumbledore's first day teaching my NEWT class, by the way.**

_Several of the subjects I was taught at school were arranged that way. I've heard it called the 'lies-to-children' method of teaching._

**Not Dumbledore's most reprehensible lies, but the phrase is apt. To continue: an object's location in Cartesian space is a property of that object that can be transfigured, considering the location of the platonic ideal at an arbitrary null point outside the cartesian space in which a wizard finds himself, located in the state of non-being **_**omnia et nihil**_**...**

Tom goes on in this vein for a good fifteen minutes before calling for questions.

_So what you're saying is that telekinesis such as I've been doing and you did as a kid is transfiguration of an object into the same object slightly offset in space? And that because this doesn't change an object against its inherent nature it's as permanent as anything is in this imperfect world?_

_**Yes. You understood?**_

_Lose the sceptical tone. Stripped of the sesquipedalianism you just gave a beginning A-level lecture to a chap with four postgraduate degrees and a full professional certification. It's been years since I even have to think about it to cut through pretentious academic obfuscatory twaddle._

**Until you stole my magic you were a muggle, how - ?**

_By the standards of the rest of Britain, wizards are barely half-educated. If you want to make anything of yourself in the non-magical world you need at least three more years of education past the equivalent of NEWTs and you're expected to have studied a thing or two outside your intended career field. Shows breadth of character, very important to prospective employers. From what little I know of wizarding Britain, you assume being a wizard or witch is enough to qualify you to do anything, which is self-evident claptrap demonstrated frequently by the incompetence of the various ministries of magic around the world._

It shouldn't be possible for Tom-in-my-head to splutter incoherently, but he manages it. Sure, I've answered his specious claim of wizarding superiority with an equally specious claim of muggle superiority, but I'm not bandying nuance with a mere epiphenomenon. Besides, that which is asserted by way of complete bollocks ought to be dismissed by way of complete bollocks. Brings balance to the cosmos, and similar.

_Tell me, purely as a teacher how did you rate Dumbledore? Leaving aside the mutual hatred thing?_

**Though it pains me to admit it, he was one of the best we had at Hogwarts when I was there. **

_And that pompous over-elaboration was normal for him, was it?_

**For the theory parts, yes. It's the expected style, certainly for NEWTS.**

I _have_ to figure out a way of getting myself a body of my own to get into Hogwarts. If you can score high marks through sheer force of bullshit, my legal training will let me absolutely _wreck_ all previous records.

That aside, I spend the rest of the night practising my poltergeisting, and now I understand that it is in fact magic I'm doing, and what kind, paying attention to anything I sense from it. And by concentrating on my 'hearing' I notice that I hear a 'note' every time I do something. Since outside of an actual body I'm not hearing with ears, this must be impinging directly on my magic. If I had a face right now, I'd be grinning.

I stop and listen: nothing. No protective spells, then. Or, rather, that's _one_ conclusion. What else can we eliminate? Can't eliminate me not having sensitive enough hearing (yet). Location might matter, if the spells can only be heard from certain vantages. Easy test for that, of course, and I float across the property line disembodied for the first time since eating Tom and his magic last night.

Well, there we have it. There _are_ spells on Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging. They 'radiate' outward from the property boundaries - fits with the protective function - and extend upward at least to the cloud cover and down as far into the earth as I dare go. (Which is not very. There are shedloads of legends about devouring horrors in the deep earth and I know for a _fact_ that spiritual entities can be eaten.)

I say 'spells' because there are two definite sounds. A deep, ponderous, flowing sort of thing and a high, chiming, arrhythmic one that sounds like what you'd get if you got a load of wind-up music boxes with different tunes and played them all together slightly out of time with each other. Two magics doesn't imply two magicians, but it _does_ permit it. This bears investigating, and I will be mining Tom's memories for any and all appropriate techniques.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

The bit with the underwater trumpeting is actually up on Youtube. I found it while refreshing my memory of the time, and I couldn't _not_ throw it in.

The Goon Show, from which the Ying Tong Song comes, is one great foundational pillars of British comedy, the others being Round the Horne and ITMA. The actual _jokes_ have passed into the annals of Dad Jokedom, but the style runs through the nation's sense of humour like the veins in blue cheese.

Vernon's attitude to onions: That's based on someone I actually _knew_ back in the mid 90s. I don't know if it's at all possible to die of eating boring food, but he was giving it a damn' good try.

Shop Stewards, for those not familiar with the more old-fashioned terminology of British Trade Unions, are the Union's representatives in individual workplaces.

Orphanages - and the accommodation for children whose parents were in the workhouse or prison, they were often the same institution - in the inter-war years are not as bad as they're often painted. They were spartan, certainly, but abuses were the exception, and investigated and punished when discovered. It was still a hard life in which the kids wanted for much, but it was frequently better than what actual parents could offer their children at the time.

The bit in the disclaimer - yes, he totally does that, and shows Harry the memory without any hint of remorse for his actions. Harry was _really _drinking the Dumbledore kool-aid to not object to that bit of shenanigans. Earlier in the same book he's depicted muggle-baiting the Dursleys. Sure, they're arseholes who didn't get a tithe of the comeuppance they deserved in the books, but: only intervening after nearly all the damage was done, no effort to help them improve, no acknowledgement of Dumbledore's own role in events even if only by omission. Just intimidation and mild physical bullying of people much, much weaker than him. One can't blame Harry for taking a perverse delight in it, but still. Dumbledore may be a great wizard, but he's a piss-poor role model.

So, to respond to reviews and PMs asking about whether this is a Dumbledore-bashing story: no more than canon was. Dumbledore gets away with some _shocking_ behaviour in the books - he's cleaned up a bit for the movies, as I recall - but I (and therefore Mal) hew to a higher standard of moral judgement than book-Harry or, apparently, JKR.

Finally: of _course_ Tom Riddle never bothered to study classical mythology. How else could he not know that Cerberus was soothed to sleep by Orpheus's lyre?

Fic recommendation: the complete works of Northumbrian, who posts on FFN and AO3 alike. Search for 'Strangers at Drakeshaugh' to be sure of finding his stuff. All of the stories are from the same post-Hogwarts canon-compliant (up until Cursed Child came out) narrative, and for all I have some _Issues_ with matters pertaining to the Epilogue he makes it _work_.


	7. It's all in the prep-work

DISCLAIMER: Is Vernon Dursley portrayed in the books as such a buffoon that he'd not last six months in any sane workplace, let alone in a management position? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Chapter 7

"_Well, there we have it. There are spells on Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging. They 'radiate' outward from the property boundaries - fits with the protective function - and extend upward at least to the cloud cover and down as far into the earth as I dare go. (Which is not very. There are shedloads of legends about devouring horrors in the deep earth and I know for a fact that spiritual entities can be eaten.)_

_I say 'spells' because there are two definite sounds. A deep, ponderous, flowing sort of thing and a high, chiming, arrhythmic one that sounds like what you'd get if you got a load of wind-up music boxes with different tunes and played them all together slightly out of time with each other. Two magics doesn't imply two magicians, but it does permit it. This bears investigating, and I will be mining Tom's memories for any and all appropriate techniques."_

-oOo-

I wake Vernon up and get him out of bed at seven sharp and immediately start swearing. Petunia, who is still abed, gives me a sharp look that cuts me off after ringing a few changes on the standard fuck-shit-bugger litany, before I can get into the _really_ rude words.

"Was that _strictly_ necessary?" she demands.

"There's actually a scientific study that proves swearing helps with pain management," I tell her, "I made Vernon exert himself yesterday and am now suffering for it. Seriously, I've seen actual _corpses_ with better fitness levels."

She sighs. "He wouldn't be told, you know."

"Yep," I say, "I've seen his memories. Told you not to nag, knew deep down you were right, got angry about it. Understandable, I suppose, he's not a happy man and I suspect he'd run screaming if anyone suggested any kind of therapy."

"Well, he wasn't, you know, mental." Petunia gets into the start of a proper huff.

I hold up a hand. "Look, I know there's a stigma about mental health. One of the effects of that stigma is that chaps like Vernon, who can manage but would be a whole lot happier and less of a trial to live with if they got just a small amount of help, _don't actually go and get that help._ Mental health problems are almost never running around with your underpants on your head and waving an axe about, they're things like hating yourself and taking it out on your family and eating and boozing yourself into an early grave. Which Vernon was _very much doing_. And while I'm not a psychiatrist, I can see inside Vernon's mind so I know what I'm talking about here."

Petunia's face gets even more pinched. She knows I've been inside her mind, too, and probably wonders how I'd diagnose her. Harshly, Petunia. Harshly.

I decide to throw her a bone. "Look, a big piece of what was ailing Vernon was that he was feeling trapped. _Sent_ to the right school, _expected_ to get the right degree, more or less _conscripted_ to work at Grunnings by the Smeltings Old Boys Association, then just as he's discovering he's got a pretty good knack for salesmanship and that it's work he enjoys he gets promoted away from that and Dudley comes along and he's got _responsibilities_ to bear up under. Then Dumbledore, the ass, gives you care of Harry without so much as a by-your-leave, along with a vaguely-worded warning of danger. On top of that there's the takeover at Grunnings and everything that shook out of that. He's going to wake up with some of the immediate problems solved for him and his health improved out of all recognition, and I dare say he'll be able to take it from there. If you like, I can spend a few nights pretending to be a therapist, austrian accent and all, and letting him unburden himself in his dreams. Maybe even teach him some of the cognitive behavioural tricks that helped me."

Her huff deflates. "I think deep down I knew he needed help. I was … I was …"

I step over and lay a hand on her shoulder. She needs a hug, but Vernon didn't do hugs and I don't feel it'd be right for me to get that familiar. She's Vernon's wife, not mine. "I understand, really I do. I don't for one minute excuse what the two of you were doing, but I do understand how you got trapped in a life that made those actions seem, well, not completely unthinkable. We both know you could have stopped at any time, so could Vernon. I'm just making it easier for you. Easier still for Vernon. And if you want to find a therapist to talk to, well, I know that it helped me back when I was alive." I'm not feeling nearly so much sympathy as I'm expressing, to be frank about it. No matter how like a rat in a trap you may feel, cruelty to children - and animals, but Petunia won't have pets in the house - is inexcusable. Trouble is, I need her and Vernon for any actions I may want to take in the material world and I'm _way_ too nervous of Tom's memories of advanced magic to go rummaging for a method to make a body of my own, so my actions aren't entirely altruistic, here.

She nods. "I suppose I'm seeing the GP as well, then."

"That might work, but NHS mental health services are geared more to people with conditions that mean they can't live normal lives at all. For people with the kind of problems you and Vernon have, the waiting lists can be tiresome because you come in behind everyone who's a danger to themselves and others. Counsellors and therapists usually have a private practise as well, though, and for a sympathetic ear every few weeks for a couple of hours? You probably spend as much in that salon you go to." _With less value for money delivered_, I add silently to myself. Although it _is_ the eighties, _everyone_ looks and dresses completely goppin'. Petunia doesn't stand out.

A few more consoling words - and a gentle touch of legilimency to reassure myself that Petunia really _does_ see me as a helpful _deus ex machina_ for the complete shitfight that she knew, deep down, her life had become - and we get the boys up and start in on breakfast.

I feed Vernon some of the slimming-product cereal Petunia keeps but doesn't like along with half a grapefruit, no sugar and a dash of cinnamon. He needs enough blood sugar to stay on his feet while I work the lard off him. I tell the boys we're going on an adventure today so we're out of the house while mummy gets on with her jobs. They are excited to learn that for today's adventure they are to be the bold knights Sir Harry and Sir Dudley, and solemnly agree that they will to be well-behaved like good knights always are.

Finding a place for an adventure on the map I bought yesterday fascinates both boys: I doubt they'll retain anything I explain to them because neither of them can read yet - far more concerning that Dudley can't, Harry has an excuse - and I suspect it's all a blur to Harry anyway. I find Box Hill Country Park reasonably close and there are some interesting historical sites marked. I pack up some sandwiches and drinks in a knapsack Vernon still has from his school's Cadet Force days and we're off!

It turns out that a bit of fresh air and the opportunity to do some completely-sanctioned running around and yelling does Dudley the world of good, behaviour-wise. There's an old fort at Box Hill, sited to rain shellfire down on any invading Frenchmen attempting the heights of the North Downs. I naturally make up a nonsense story about the place - when your audience is small children you can't _not_ \- which gets a few snorts of laughter from the National Trust staffers. I'm quite proud of the bit about the French Legion of Attack Monkeys, but I suspect that's where I lose Harry to suspicions of me being Silly.

The road through the park zigzags up the hill. It's actually called Zig Zag Road, and I tell the boys it's a Roman Road, which would normally be straight but on the day they built this bit they were all drunk from celebrating Caesar's birthday. It's quite the feat of exercise to get to the top, even Harry's flagging a bit, Dudley needs to stop and rest and Vernon would, left to himself, have keeled over and prayed for the sweet release of death. (In my own body I'd've ignored the zig zags and struck straight up the hill, which is barely a pimple next to the Bowland Fells I grew up among. Hashtag just-hiker-things.)

The whole top of the hill is forested, venue for plenty of running around and yelling by the boys and exchanging pleasantries with labrador-walking locals for me. The boys, like all children, are immune to the scenery and views I'm enjoying. Sir Harry and Sir Dudley find _excellent_ knightly swords in the woods, which are clearly magical because they appear to the unwise and the dullard alike as mere sticks. Much brandishing ensues and after I've taught them medieval war cries the the forest rings to high-pitched cries of "HAVE AT YOU, VARLET!" and "NONE SHALL PASS!"

There's a 19th century folly - a round tower with battlements at the top that looks like a child's drawing of a castle - at the far end of the ridge and we stop there for sandwiches, drinks, and a game of pretend in which the tower is the lair of a great big 'orrible dragon that the two bold knights challenge and defeat. On the march back to the car I teach the boys some of the songs I remember from boy scout hikes, although I leave out even the sanitized version of Cock o' the North: if Harry goes to Hogwarts knowing the verse about Auntie Minnie he's at risk of detention until he dies of old age.

They've both behaved themselves so it's ice-cream and coke from the cafe for them and a cup of tea for me before we head home. It's only a half-hour drive but both boys have to be woken from napping so as to get them out of the car and into the house.

Petunia has had a productive day - Harry's room is nearly cleared out into the cupboard under the stairs and the loft (which last should've been Vernon's job, but even if he could climb a ladder without dying of exhaustion he'd never fit through the hatch) and she's got a decent meat-and-two-veg meal all but ready to go and even had time to catch the Eastenders Omnibus while she got some ironing done.

She's briefly baffled with the excitedly-told story of the boys' day - she looks at me a couple of times to be reassured that there wasn't an _actual_ dragon on the North Downs today, or ravening monkeys - until she cottons on that unlike Vernon I actually _encourage_ games of pretend. It's only her reaction that reminds me that I need to be a bit more careful with those, since dragons are, in this world, objectively _real_. I supposed I should count myself fortunate I didn't end up having to do some fast talking at a Ministry Obliviator.

We get an entire evening of good behaviour and a peaceable bedtime out of both boys, largely I suspect because they're both completely knackered. I get slightly surprised that there is actually some good telly on Sunday evenings. I used to get packed off to grandparents for a lot of weekends during the late seventies and early eighties - which I was usually quite glad of, taken all in all - and it was generally Songs of Praise or nothing on Sundays. Because, bluntly, old people.

"You'll be leaving Vernon to sleep again?" Petunia asks come bedtime.

"I will," I say. "I don't actually sleep, as it happens, so there's not a lot of point hanging around while Vernon gets the shuteye he needs."

"Thank you. Obviously I understand that what you're doing is for the best, but sharing a bed, well …."

"Is a step too far? I quite understand. As ethical lines go it's a fairly minor one, but I don't want to cross it all the same."

"Last night, did you find the magic you went looking for?"

"I did. Or, rather, I found _something_ where I'd expect to find it, but I'm not sure yet how to interpret what it is. I need to think about how to measure and analyse it to know more. It's reassuring to know that there might actually be some kind of protection around Harry," not least because it's a point against the Dumbledore-as-complete-arsehole theory, which would be all kinds of concerning if true, "but I wouldn't care to speculate about what exactly that magic is in advance of actual evidence."

"You can't tell just by looking?"

"At this point, no. While I was alive, as I told you, I wasn't a wizard. I knew _about_ magic, but not any of the actual details. I only really acquired actual magic when I ate the spirit that was attacking Harry, and I haven't yet absorbed all of the education I need to use it effectively."

Petunia looks puzzled.

"I got his magic and all his memories. But I've got to go through and pick out the ones where he was going to Hogwarts and, well, digest them. Obviously not literal digestion, but it's the nearest word I can think of for what I'm doing."

"And you can't do them all at once, get it over with, sort of thing?"

"Probably, but I'm wary of doing that. We're talking about a dyed-in-the-wool dark wizard, which is to say a violent criminal with magical powers, and he was active for over forty years starting when he was a little boy. If I absorb forty years of memories of cruelty and murder, how will that affect me? Truth is, I don't know, but since I'm supposed to be here for Harry I don't want to chance turning myself into a monster."

"Monster?"

"We're talking about the individual - I won't call him a man, he abandoned his humanity early in his career, what little he had to begin with - who murdered your sister and tried to murder your nephew. Who was fifteen months old at the time. That alone is enough to call him a monster, but it's of a piece with how he'd been behaving since he was fucking _eight_. I've seen his childhood memories, he enjoyed it. And spent the next forty-odd years _getting worse_. I'm not going to give you details, the only reason _I'm_ not having nightmares is that I don't need to sleep. Now, the memories of being that monster are attached to me, I can even talk to them just as we talked while I was with you the other day, but if I bring all of that vileness inside myself, do I remain who I am or become something else, some mix of him and me that's perilously close to being fifty-fifty?"

"Oh."

"Yeah. I'm going to have to absorb _some_ of him, of course, because I can't trust him to teach me what I need to know. It's easy to overlook amid all his other crimes, but he's a liar into the bargain. Tried framing a classmate for one of his murders when was fifteen or sixteen, to pick just an early example."

Petunia snorts a laugh. "And to think I was unhappy to share a bed with you just because you're not my husband. You're carrying _that_ around with you and it doesn't bother you?"

"It bothers me quite a lot, but the alternative was leaving him at liberty to hurt Harry. His next targets would have been you and Vernon and Dudley, of course." Which is a lie, of course, I didn't get an alternative. I Beat Tom, and the next thing I know is I've swallowed him, with no idea how it happened. Plus, I've no idea whether Lily's protection would have fried the bugger if he'd got past me. Or, it occurs to me, drawing me in at that time so's I could destroy the horcrux in the one place and manner it was possible for me to do so might have _been_ the protection at work: I'm a long way from thinking I know how magic works, after all.

"And Dumbledore brought that to our house?"

"He did. Oh, I doubt he knew he was doing it, and as I said Lily's magic kept it contained, it was purest accident that the thing was able to get at Harry at all." Yes, we're going over ground I've covered with Petunia already, but her coming on-side completely surprised me. I had _no idea_ that that one line about Lily would have the effect it did. So naturally I'm reinforcing it as much as I can.

While this makes me sound like a master schemer, I've studied far too much history to believe that there's any such thing. The figures with a reputation for it turn out, on closer examination, to be master bullshitters who spotted and rode the waves of events. More of history depends on sheer, dumb luck than all the theorists and politicians would have you believe. The rest of it, and pardon my cynicism, is like the book says, extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.

-oOo-

I spend much of the night integrating Tom's memories of his Hogwarts years. He didn't like that and complained as much as I'd let him, but seriously. Fuck him. I'm getting to know him better now and really, he's entirely horrible and if I was sure I'd suffer no ill effects I'd've taken everything just to ensure at least this part of him didn't exist any more.

It's going to take me a while to sort everything into proper places, of course, and most of it's going to require a wand - does Vernon count as a wizard while being possessed by a magical spirit? Memo: do some experimenting - but Tom did expand his repertoire of wandless tricks while he was at school. Nothing spectacular: there was a memoir of visiting Ouagadou in the library that had an appendix on the basic spells taught to the younger children there. The reputation for wandless magic being hard is apparently based entirely on it not being formally taught at Hogwarts. It's gesture-based, so again experiments are going to have to wait until I'm back driving Vernon. If I can do spells as Vernon, I should be able to use a wand as him too. I'll have to be careful to build up slowly, because I don't have a school full of teachers to correct any mistakes I make.

The downside of this is that he learned about Horcruxes at Hogwarts. Slughorn wasn't the only one a little too free-and-easy with the Restricted Section passes. On top of that, the idea that one restricted section is enough is just _absurd_. I mean, the section that contains the advanced-brewers-only recipe books also contains the magics that require the caster to commit murder? I'm firmly against book-burning, but some knowledge should be restricted to people of proven good character just as a matter of general public safety.

Which, I appreciate, wouldn't have stopped Tom at the time: even Dumbledore didn't catch on to just how bad he _really_ was until Slughorn started raising non-specific 'concerns' about him in his final year. Or so Tom believes: Dumbledore may have seen trying to fit Hagrid up for the Chamber business as amounting to a confession. I certainly would have, even with as short a time as I spent in criminal practise. Fit-ups by members of the public are vanishingly unlikely to be done by anyone other than the actual offender. (Fit-ups by the police, of course, which here in the 80s are not quite as common as they used to be but still happen, are a different matter.)

My disgruntlement with the level of supervision Hogwarts exercises over its students aside, I don't just have the knowledge of how to make the things (stomach churning: the concluding murder is but the capstone on a pyramid of awful) but the memory of actually making one. Tom laid in wait, possessing the basilisk - possible for a parselmouth but not otherwise, it's as much a magic of mind-to-mind contact with snakes as it is speaking their language - so that Myrtle's death would be entirely on him.

He didn't notice at the time, but he was definitely different afterward: unlike him I've got a much more external and non-subjective point of view of the process. For fairly obvious reasons hardly anyone has done any actual experiments with the process, but I find it telling that in literally every other magical process involving killing - and Tom learned a few while at Hogwarts, the revolting little shit - the death is called a 'sacrifice'. Which implies an entity the sacrifice is offered _to_, of course.

No such thing is mentioned in the horcrux texts, which is unusual for recipients of sacrifices, who often demand acknowledgment, respect or outright worship. Whatever it is that's taking those sacrifices is keeping quiet about its involvement, which I find sinister. What if the horcrux-maker, in opening up his essential self - soul, ba, ka, what-have-you - to that entity is opening himself up to a little … editing?

It would certainly explain the before-and-after difference in Tom, wouldn't it? And what I ate wasn't just 'part' of Tom, it was complete. I have the magic of a fully-realised wizard at this point, and all his memories from soup to nuts. That suggests that the horcrux isn't a piece, it's a _copy_. And I therefore have reason to suspect that everyone who's made one is touched by something distinctly uncanny.

I've got time to think on the implications. For now, I'm going to have to plan how to get in to Diagon Alley to get books - I 'remember' the lessons but I haven't really internalised anything, and I suspect doing the reading is going to help a lot with that - and equipment for analysing the protections around Number Four.

-oOo-

At breakfast the following morning, something occurs to me that should have right from the off: "Petunia?"

"Yes?"

"You've been handling the paperwork for young Harry, right? GP registration, name down for school, things of that nature?"

"Yes, why?"

"Has anyone asked you for any paperwork about how Harry came to live here? Court order, social worker correspondence, so much as a birth certificate?"

"They haven't, actually. Should they have?"

"Not really, checking every single child would be a massive burden and it's not like sending a child to school or getting him medical treatment is any kind of crime." The paranoia about illegal immigrants coming here and stealing our NHS, the so called 'health tourists', is years in the future. "But we should have it in place, completeness' sake if nothing else. I mean, what if we wanted to holiday abroad? We'd need that stuff to get a passport for him. We've still got the letter that came with Harry, right?"

"We have. I'm not sure we're allowed to show anyone, though."

"That would be if we were subject to _their_ laws, which we're not. And if it causes the people responsible for all this some embarrassment, I shan't lose any sleep over it. They should have done the paperwork if they were going to involve our side." Harry's looking worried at this. "Nothing for you to worry about, Harry, it's grown-up stuff and rather boring, we just need to make sure that all the paperwork is right. You'll learn about this stuff as you get older, and let me tell you, it's just as boring when you're grown up but you can't get away from it. Petunia, when you've a spare moment, gather together everything you can find, paperwork-wise, relating to Harry. I should be able to put something together that a solicitor can turn into a proper court order that makes this Harry's home in law as well as in fact."

Harry looks confused.

"You don't need to understand this stuff, Harry," I tell him, "not until you're a lot older. For now, just know that this is your home, and leave all the paperwork to the grownups. If you want to understand it, step one is learning to read, which we'll make a start on when I come home from work, savvy?"

"Savvy!"

"And Dudley? I want to hear that you've been a proper little gentleman at Mrs. Whinney's. You were very well behaved for me on our adventure yesterday, can you do it again today, Sir Dudley?"

Dudley nods. I'm pretty sure he's behaving himself out of sheer confusion at this point. Whatever works, and all that. With any luck I've caught him early enough that he's not going to be a bad influence on anyone. The other kids - the books say he was part of a gang of louts - are a problem for the future.

"A solicitor?" Petunia asks as she's seeing me out the door, "isn't that expensive?"

"Well, not if Harry's the client, which he rightly should be. He gets legal aid, since he doesn't have a job or any savings, so the taxpayer picks up the tab. Vernon's been on Higher Rate for long enough, time we got some of the services we're paying for, eh?"

"Is that how it works?" Petunia looks surprised, but then she gets her political and legal knowledge from reading the Daily Mail, so ignorance is to be expected.

I shrug. "I'm not exactly an expert on Legal Aid, since I was rather at the other end of the profession, but I had to learn the basics to qualify. We might have to cover some disbursements, like a private inquiry agent to satisfy the investigation requirement to get a death certificate for poor Lily. She'll only count as missing on our side of things until we can get that."

Petunia's lips purse up at that, and I don't comment: while I want her to unclench on the subject of magic, wizards are a subject on which I am quite sanguine about her having strong negative opinions. The contempt with which they treat the non-magical population is shocking, to say the least, and they think throwing people in torture-prisons without so much as a kangaroo-court trial is a fit way for civilised people to behave. It's entirely possible to believe that Dumbledore is a complete bastard and _still_ one of the good guys when measured against the rest of his kind.

-oOo-

Grunnings is actually quite the operation. Their head office is the top four floors of an office building in Woking, but they have an office in Scotland and factory and workshop and R&D premises scattered across the country. As a firm, they've a good name for geological and mining drills and associated kit. They got taken over in late '82 - which they actually sought through an acquisitions broker - because they overtraded while the North Sea Oil boom was at its peak and needed a hefty recapitalisation to put them on a firmer footing.

Vernon works here because he took advantage of the fact that the Smeltings Old Boys Association was capable, like most such organisations dedicated to the Old School Tie, of some breathtaking feats of nepotism. As luck would have it, being parachuted into an upper-echelon sales position let him discover a talent for salesmanship: when he's not being a ranting gammon-faced fuckwit he has an agreeable line in affable fat-bloke bonhomie. As a result he used to enjoy the respect of his peers and sales trips out to far-flung places, and realised only too late that a fast-tracked seat on the board would put a stop to that. The board got slimmed down after the takeover and Vernon's position in charge of the sales force is now just a manager rather than a director. He reports to the sales director of the parent company they've had for nearly three years now.

I can therefore see why Vernon's in a state of quiet rebellion, expressed in the fiddling of expenses and creating a toxic work environment by snapping at people. (He used to shout, but Personnel came and had a quiet word about what that was likely to cost them in Employment Tribunal settlements, which they would report on in full to the parent company board.) He only gets involved in actual sales when the deal is more-or-less done by one of his subordinates' subordinates, and doesn't even have the consolation of a seat on the board any more.

His lack of front-line role is good: I'm pants at sales, and while I've got Vernon's knowledge base on the subject of drills, having it at second hand like that wouldn't help. Fortunately, what Vernon does all day is management, which I'm accustomed to treating like a part-time job - even the biggest law firms are run by people who spend most of their time actually being lawyers. I mean, if management were actually _hard_ most managers wouldn't be able to do it.

Which is a slight exaggeration for comic effect, but it's not difficult to do better than Vernon's slow, not-terribly-subtle self-sabotage. Just turning up to the office with a polite demeanour and ordinary civility clears the low bar Vernon has been setting recently.

The one bit of my day where perhaps some shouting might be called for - chap in the Aberdeen office has got one of the oil rigs we supply sending complaints to head office, and the fault is quite clearly on our end - I don't stop to think about it and handle him the way I would a junior lawyer who fucked up. Which is to say with icy, professional, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger contempt. If you do it right, you can actually convey a sneer down a telephone line. Compared to Vernon's usual bluster and bellowing, this is apparently terrifying enough to generate, within the hour, a faxed letter of formal apology and extravagant promises as to how quickly it's going to be fixed.

I mine Vernon's memories for the appropriate back-channel contact in the Aberdeen office - another Smeltings Old Boy - and call him to mention it. I learn that the man was expecting the usual Vernon Dursley bollocking, which is ten minutes of intemperate hot air. He was shocked to find himself dealing with, and I quote, "Darth Bloody Vader with toothache." It seems I've got the poor blighter convinced I won't be satisfied with just _firing_ him if he doesn't get his mistake fixed fast enough. Not actually the first time my had-it-with-your-nonsense telephone manner has been likened to a Dark Lord of the Sith, so I put down the phone with a smile. _Yeah, still got it._

The rest of the day flies by in a flurry of reports to be read, letters and memos to be dictated and occasional chats on the telephone, most of which Vernon was expecting so I can handle them out of his memories. I'm briefly amazed at how much I'm getting done until I realise: email on everyone's desktop is still ten years away. My work habits have all been based around getting through as much as possible before the next irritation pings into my inbox.

I get a funny look or two at the announcement that I'm out of the office cake-shop kitty at least until I'm below fifteen stone and that sugar in my tea is now a hanging offence. I'm not sure whether it's because they're stunned at the thought of Vernon on a diet or just that I'm not pissing and moaning about it. I mean, sure, I'm hungry as _hell_ but that's nobody's problem but my own, an attitude Vernon doesn't adhere to. If he's upset, he's sharing with _everyone_. A surprisingly communist sentiment for a lifelong tory voter.

-oOo-

When I get home, it's to find _both_ boys on the naughty step. Wide-eyed and clearly on the verge of tears. No blood in evidence so whatever they've done can't be _that_ bad. "Wait right there, you two, while I hear what you've been up to."

It's all I can do to keep a straight face as I go into the kitchen - closed door, naturally - "They look like they're sharing a Condemned Cell, Petunia. What did they do?"

"I sent them out in the back garden while I was getting dinner ready. Told them to have a bit of a run about, get some fresh air, maybe play with that swingball thing Dudley insisted on having. It seems that Sir Harry and Sir Dudley wanted some sword-fighting practise and used my garden canes. Which was all very well, they were having fun and I was pleased to see it, until they swashbuckled over by the greenhouse and broke a pane."

"Neither of them hurt?"

"Thankfully no, although my heart was in my mouth when I heard the glass break. They were both sorrying their little heads off when I ran out, and Dudley admitted it was him that did the damage." _That's a good sign_, I think, but then Petunia tells me "I told them to go and sit on the naughty step until you came home."

I winced. "How long?" The rule of thumb is a minute per year of age: enough to make the point, not enough to be cruel.

"About twenty minutes. I know you said five minutes, but they're in it together so I thought I'd let them stew in it together. I've been hearing Harry tell Dudley to stay where he is or they'll get done worse." Okay, that's not so bad.

"Well, they've learned a bit of solidarity out of it, I suppose," I say. "It was all I could do to keep my face straight when I saw them, they were trying so hard to be brave. A brief bollocking should finish them off nicely and then it's hugs and forgiveness all round. And, I think, a rule about telling a grown up what game they want to play and listening to any safety rules we set. If they're actually playing together - which as you say is good to see - that more than doubles the potential for not thinking about the consequences. Actually, I'll just check the damage first."

Out in the back garden the greenhouse is pristine. As in, like it was put up yesterday.

"It was that pane there," Petunia says in a confused tone, pointing to one at just about sword-fighting height for a little boy. "And all the metalwork is cleaner than it was, and the moss is cleaned off."

"Well, there _is _magic for repairing broken things, it's one of the first spells they learn. I suspect this is accidental magic at work, Harry doesn't want Dudley to get in trouble, so his magic fixed it for us. Probably best not to say anything, though. I'll tell them I had a spare piece of glass to fix it with, I shudder to think what they'll be like if they get the idea Harry can just fix any damage they do."

"It wasn't like this with Lily, she did things with flowers and making the swing go without pushing. And that Snape boy once made a branch fall off a tree and hit me."

"It's different for every kid, I think. Strong emotion is supposed to be the key, and the character of the kid will shape it too. The Snape boy, was he a bit of a shit to you generally?"

"To everyone but Lily, and he only started being nice to _her_ after he knew she was a witch. His family were a bad lot, I recall."

"Figures, lot of that attitude among wizards. Anyway, with Harry, if we get them both keen to be good boys and happy most of the time we shouldn't have any trouble. Or, at least, only this kind of trouble, which isn't even that bad by little boy standards, we haven't had to take anyone to cCasualty and no police were called. We didn't even have to buy a new pane of glass. You carry on and I'll go and visit the prisoners in their cell."

I grab a kitchen chair and sit down in front of them and spend ten minutes or so taking them through where they went wrong and how to not do that again. My own boys, as adults, told me that with hindsight they'd rather have had a walloping than this sort of solemn rubbing-in-how-much-of-an-idiot-you-were talking-to. (Daddy's little princess was always perfectly behaved, of course, and how dare you suggest I might have ever had to tell her off.) Much sniffling, more apologies delivered formally to Petunia and it's hugs and forgiveness and promises to do better and remember the new rule. By which time dinner is served.

After dinner, the boys are allowed some television before bath time and bed. I learn that The Great Humberto is Paul Daniels' stage persona in this universe, doing a variety show with a sort of ringmaster-and-his-circus motif, showcasing up-and-coming music and comedy acts and the occasional variety turn. It's actually a much better show than anything _I_ ever saw him do (the only worse illusionist I ever saw on the telly was Tommy Cooper, and he was being terrible deliberately for laughs) and I suspect if I watched I'd see some faces I'd recognise. Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton and Paul Whitehouse were all getting their starts about now, as I recall.

I leave the boys to it. While they're engrossed, Petunia shows me over the file she's assembled for Harry. She'd got a birth certificate for him - Lily had registered him as born at what Tom recognises as the street address of St. Mungo's, and after that nothing until Petunia registered him at the Dursleys' GP in January of '82. She informs me she got him his vaccinations, telling the doctor she had no idea where her sister had been or what medical care Harry had had. After that, nothing - being shut away most of the time meant Harry didn't even get the childhood illnesses that vaccines don't cover. The various bumps and bruises he picked up from all the housework or the rough handling she and Vernon gave him don't show up in the records, of course.

Petunia handled the form for Harry's Child Benefit and stated honestly that he was her nephew, included the birth certificate and gave Harry's previous address as the one for St. Mungos - she tells me that she had _no idea_ that that wasn't the Potters' home, and assumed from the reputedly run-down neighbourhood it was in that James Potter was poor. The application _should_ have prompted at least some sort of follow-up, but didn't, but then Child Benefit isn't so much administered as processed. So long as there's no more than one claim per child, nobody much gives a hoot.

Harry's primary school file starts at the same time as Dudley's and there's an exchange of correspondence about Harry not starting until later; the school won't guarantee there's a place for him which was an awful risk on Petunia's part to take out of sheer pettiness. Which it was, I've seen it in her mind. Deliberately not letting him start until all the other kids had made friendships, I ask you. There _should_ have been something from the local Education Authority about it, but either Harry slipped through the cracks or we're in an area that doesn't have a policy of all kids starting in the September of the school year that contains their fifth birthday. Most do. Fortunately, closer to the present day, the school write to say they still have a place - the baby-boom bow wave was my age bracket, not Harry's, so there's a lot of slack in the system at the moment and rounds of school closures and mergers are still a few years away.

Dumbledore's letter is sufficiently obliquely worded - as you'd expect from someone who was taught his correspondence skills in the 19th century - that it only counts as a breach of the Statute of Secrecy if you're in on the joke. The only truly unusual thing about it is that it's written on parchment (or maybe vellum, I've handled old legal parchments but that's the limit of my knowledge) and it's not like that's wholly unknown in the non-magical world, just wildly expensive compared to paper and not used for anything but ceremonial stuff or government documents that need to survive centuries of archiving. Using it for correspondence says 'eccentric and more money than sense' long before it says 'wizard'.

We've got no parental responsibility order or guardianship order, which would have been fairly standard back in 2005 (forward in 2005 from the current date: time travel plays absolute _hob_ with tenses) when I last had a nodding acquaintance with family law. I really ought to look up the current law, since the Children Act 1989 is four years in the future. I'm pretty sure it was mostly just a re-enactment of existing provisions so I shouldn't be totally at sea, but assumption is the mother of all cock-ups, after all. It's not urgent, though, as this really needs to be dealt with by someone with a current practising certificate. Mine isn't just lapsed, it _hasn't been issued yet_.

I tell Petunia I'll find someone local, or possibly in Woking or Guildford, with an appropriate practising specialty. I vaguely recall a register of solicitors certified to do guardian _ad litem_ work in Children Act cases, but that might not be a thing yet. Most libraries will have a recent copy of Chambers & Partners, and failing that I can just telephone the Law Society. Not that I ever had a referral through them, but I'm pretty sure they do it.

The rest of the boys' evening is spent in reading lessons, immersing ourselves in the adventures of Peter, Jane, and Pat the dog and having find-the-letter-on-the-page competitions. Dudley should _definitely_ be doing better than he is - get him tested for dyslexia? Try and remember the adaptive things they gave my daughter to help her past it? - and Harry's intensity on the task wouldn't shame a kid a couple of years older. I suspect if he'd had a bit more attention and access to printed material, he'd've been reading well before now, large print at least. Maybe not as precocious as I was - I was reading at three and up to Enid Blyton novels and anything with sharks or dinosaurs in it by five - but certainly functionally literate.

After we've got them to bed, I tell Petunia to make sure they watch Sesame Street for the educational content, however american it might be it does actually work. (For adults too: the foreign editions are a great help if you're learning a language.) Thinking that having a few episodes taped would be a good thing, I wrestle with the manual for the Betamax machine to set up a schedule of recordings, only to discover that it _won't bloody do that_. I distinctly recall owning VHS players that would record at several different times. This outsize monstrosity - you could kennel a medium-sized dog in the bastard - has all the versatility of a wind-up alarm clock. It has tiny dials you turn to set the recording time, it's that little removed from being actually steam-powered.

Any technology distinguishable from magic is _insufficiently advanced, damn it!_

Petunia finds my sarcasm on the subject - she knows I've seen the future, but this is the first time she's seen me get frustrated about it not being here yet - highly amusing. I settle down with the paper to read a full report of England's Test Cricket win, on the basis that I may as well have something positive before lights-out.

Behind the paper, I'm curling my right hand into a particular shape from Tom's memories. Under my breath, I'm repeating a short line of praise, in Coptic, to the god Re, while willing my magic to produce light. I'm not expecting results quickly: while the magic they teach at Ouagadou is nearly all wandless, the memoir-writer insisted it demonstrated the superiority of wanded magic by reason of it taking much longer to get students actually casting spells. Wands, apparently, flatten the learning curve a _lot_ in addition to their general utility and ability to substitute for a whole arsenal of magical tools.

-oOo-

We've set the pattern for the next few weeks, at any rate. Me covering Vernon's job during the day, helping the boys with their reading in the evenings, and getting them out of the house for adventures on Sundays. We get inexpensive flat-pack furniture for Harry's room and get him moved in, talk Dudley down from a meltdown or two over the issue of sharing his toys (the big one is over the Atari, which I move down to the living room so's he can share it with _me,_ I'm not passing up a slice of gaming nostalgia like that) and generally get the boys settled in a routine of treating others, and being treated, like civilised human beings. My hopes for Dudley rise.

Harry's spectacles - your classic NHS contraceptive gogs, such as I wore when I was his age, it's a rite of passage - are with us by the end of the first week and Harry spends the entire weekend just going around and looking at stuff with them. I keep having to step out of the room with my fist in my mouth, and even Petunia is starting to unclench on the subject of her nephew. Dudley's fascinated too - he had his eyes checked and found to be fine - because the glasses that allow Harry to see "make it all wonky" for him. They both get mornings at Mrs. Whinney's four days a week - all day Thursdays when Petunia plays bridge - and reports are that with Harry along, Dudley is a lot better behaved. Harry's ability to recognise letters takes a leap forward, and both boys master the alphabet song.

Petunia is somewhat grumpy about this last thing. Apparently it got in her head and won't get out. My exhortation to look on the bright side, that she'll never forget alphabetical order again, gets me a Hard Stare. I decide to hold off on teaching them "The Cat's Got No Hair On" - my own sister actually threatened to kill me for teaching that to my nephews.

Vernon's weight comes down by nearly ten pounds, getting him below the 19 stone mark. Brisk walks morning and evening are the limit of the exercise he's capable of still, but he's getting better. Petunia squashes the idea of getting a dog to take on those walks, even when I suggest getting a big one that can frighten Marge's mutant beast into submission. I don't push it: while I am very much in charge here it's not _actually_ my home.

Those walks are also the occasion of me figuring out how to 'hear magic' when I'm possessing someone. It's really just a minor trick of attention: I was doing it all the while, but focussed so hard on hearing what my host was hearing - possession is a skill, unlike piloting one's own native body, and it's possible to make mistakes. This was a small one that cost me almost nothing, fortunately.

Dudley, since he now has a regular playmate and coming with me when I go out to walk the Vernon, is looking a lot healthier. He's always going to be a little chunk, but he's putting on muscle under the fat. Harry, for his part, is growing in all directions like a weed, the kind of weed you have to call in the Men With Serious Herbicides for: the gap between his shorts and socks is visibly bigger in only a month. Petunia notes this when getting his school uniform, and buys him enough growing room to last until he's about forty. First day of school in a uniform you can barely see out of: another rite of passage. We're still early enough in history that primary school uniforms include a shirt and tie, rather than the eminently more practical polo shirts that my kids wore. Practicality be damned, the photo Petunia snaps of the two of them on Harry's first day is weapons-grade adorable.

It's the first picture of Harry she's taken, and the first to make it on to the wall of the hallway. I keep my own counsel on the other artwork hung there: Petunia picked it all and I don't need the friction.

It takes me four weeks of surreptitious practise in the office, in the evenings and while out walking, but I get the light spell working. Score! It's that that makes Vernon wake up at last.

_**Am I a freak now?**_

_No, Vernon, you are not a wizard. I have magic, which I can use while I'm guiding you. Don't worry, this is going to make things better faster for you and your family. The stronger I am the more independence I can give you._

_**It's unnatural!**_

_So's everything but living in a tree and eating all your food raw. Did you think that before Petunia told you about her sister?_

_**Yes. Well, a bit. She told me they were full of airs and most of it was useless.**_

_They're full of airs all right, and Petunia knew about the stuff her sister was learning. Which was beginner's stuff, which is useless in every field, no?_

_**I suppose. Dudley's happy?**_

_Yes, Dudley's happy. I just have a lot more experience than you with raising children, and wasn't quite as handicapped by my upbringing as you are by yours. As long as you're paying attention in there, you'll learn for yourself._

_**Don't like the hocus-pocus.**_

_You don't have to like it. But, like it or not, I'm using it to help your family, so pipe down with the complaining. _

_**Why's Petunia, you know, with the freak?**_

_I reminded her that Harry is all she has left of her sister. Her whole family. She's remembered he's just a child who wasn't even born when all the things that upset her happened._

_**He's not hurting Dudley?**_

_He's not. Dudley's learning better, playing nicer and behaving more like the young gentleman he ought to be. He's got someone to play with while he's at home, and I think he likes that._

Vernon keeps on like that for a while, rambling and repeating himself. He might be awake in there, but he's not a hundred percent awake. Just enough to be a bit more coherent than talking in his sleep. His repeated concern for Dudley makes me think marginally better of him, at any rate.

The boys go to school on the 3rd of September, by which time I'm well on the way to mastering the spell to cool water. I tell the people at Grunnings - who are flinching a lot less when I pilot Vernon to his desk of a morning - that I've been advised of the benefits of proper hydration and take to keeping a jug of water on my desk to practise on. By the end of the boys' first week at school I've got that one down too. Apparently I learn faster than 11-year-olds away from home for the first time. And, to my amusement, Tom when he tried this at fourteen.

Over the weeks, Tom gets less and less coherent, less able to make himself known unprompted and more unable to answer questions. I've been going through everything from his Hogwarts years and looking for learning experiences that build on them. And then eating them. I guess, and turn out to be right, that when Tom was hitting the books he wasn't generally committing atrocities, so the memories are somewhat safe. Not _entirely _safe, because some of the practical exercises would be grounds for summary execution in a sane world. This is why I only do this when I'm out and roaming at night, and outside the presumably-protective spells on Number Four. If it all goes pear-shaped on me, there'll be a line of defence between Tom and Harry. Plus there's no chance of any part of Tom spilling over into Vernon: even without magic, Tom is inventively malevolent.

I suppress any thought of frustration at the slowing of my progress as I exhaust all the learning experiences that build on Hogwarts classes. The things Tom did changed him without him noticing, and my fear of too rapid assimilation has changed from my personality being swamped to the possibility of the same thing happening to me. I don't even rightly know if the mere memory of those magics is enough to do the trick, but the thought of waking up one day and not noticing that I've become a grandiose lunatic with the self-restraint of Caligula gives me the piss shivers. Taking it slow and indulging in a lot of self-examination is the safest I know how to be when I _have_ to get this knowledge on board.

Come the first weekend after the boys are back at school, I can't put it off any longer. I need at the very least to go forage in Flourish and Blotts. Remembering the reading and the classes is all very well, but doing the reading in my own right will cement the learning in my _own_ mind and memories. Diagon Alley will be quiet with all the magical kids packed off to Scotland, and I've picked up enough from Tom to navigate the place. Particularly his later years with his job at Borgin and Burke, which started the summer after the orphanage kicked him out at fourteen. Not for cause, he hardly interacted with the other kids over the summers, but because that was the age you were supposed to get out and get a job in those days.

Caractacus Burke took advantage of the desperate orphan to get him to sign a magically-binding indenture of apprenticeship, the working conditions of which were why Tom was so desperate to stay at Hogwarts over the summers. Burke had wanted an educated dogsbody, so permitted him to go to school, but worked him like a rented donkey during the holidays. And then was surprised when Tom ghosted on him when the contract was up: Tom had figured out that there wasn't a set date but a standard of skill to be reached and a regrettable lack of clarity on whose opinion of Tom's skills counted. Burke didn't realise Tom was cheeky enough to certify himself and get out of the contract that way.

So on a rainy September Saturday, I leave the boys with Petunia and a stack of cartoons from the video library, and get on the 9:17 train to Waterloo, whence I can take the tube to Leicester Square, the nearest Underground Station to the Leaky Cauldron.

I'm a _tiny_ bit nervous: while I've got legilimency and Tom's repertoire of tricks with which to scare the hoi polloi, against anyone that can resist I've got a whopping repertoire of two whole spells. Part of the problem is that while a reliable defence against anyone giving me shit is a firm manner and a confident stride, Vernon's still in too poor shape to adopt the right demeanour. He _waddles_, which is only good for intimidating ducks. And, inside, the prospect of going among magicals has him bricking himself so loudly that I probably come off a bit distracted what with keeping him calm.

I've decided to crack on that I'm a foreigner to explain away the lingering ignorance. I've not eaten any of Tom's memories of the alley from much after 1960, so I'm probably out of date and I'm not fool enough to think what I've got is complete anyway. The Ouagadou spells I know and the fact that I can do the accent and know some of the slang means I've settled on South African. And, as a fat, small-minded racist, Vernon even fits the national stereotype as seen by outsiders.

It turns out that the Leaky Cauldron does a perfectly acceptable - it's a solid seven, a good drink but nowt to write home about - pint of mild, which steadies Vernon down because, well, anyone who brews good beer can't be all bad no matter how much weird foreign writing there is on the pewter tankard. Amused at how undemanding my host's taste in beer is and his dismissal of anglo-saxon futhorc ale-runes as foreign when they're more English than he is, I steer us out into the alley and push some magic through Vernon's fingers to open the archway.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley," I whisper to myself.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

It may seem like this is all going too easily. There's a reason for that, but Mal won't find out for a while.

Box Hill is a real country park. Which I've never been to, but I can read a map and I've assumed that it's like the dozens of country parks up and down the country that I _have_ been to.

Songs of Praise: the flagship of the BBC's religious programming. Stick TV cameras in a church somewhere and film the congregation - generally ten times the regular turnout - belting out hymns. I don't know how many episodes of Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica I missed because Nana wanted that rubbish on. Too many, certainly. I ever get my hands on the schedulers who put ITV's sci-fi slot directly opposite the BBC's god-bothering hour, I shan't be responsible for my actions.

I'm definitely being unfair to Betamax in this chapter. Back then, all video recorders were that crap. And huge: the first one I ever saw (VHS, I think, but this was '81 or '82 so I may misremember) was three feet wide, two feet deep and stood eight inches high. And was worked by throwing small levers in slots on the top.

The speculation about the nature of horcruxes may well be just that. We'll see how it pans out in the rest of the story. I'm also fairly certain that Herpo, like all educated Greeks of his period, would have studied in Egypt, and their conception of the soul and what can be done with it is _very_ different from the classical greek/christian ideas through which Horcruxes are presented by JKR.

I've been very unkind to South Africans in this, but we're talking about the 80s, when it was entirely possible to have a hit song whose b-side was the rather catchy "I've never met a nice South African" (It's on youtube, go look it up.) because the Apartheid regime was _that_ unpopular. For the record, I have met _several_ nice South Africans. Which doesn't make the stereotype any less a real thing in people's minds. Stereotypes are quite useful in selling an imposture.

Ale-runes are a real thing from the archaeological record, found inscribed on drinking vessels everywhere that runes were used. In the potterverse, they proof the drink you just bought against refilling charms and similar, and are also your guarantee that you're paying for actual ale, not transfigured slop, because the runes prevent that too.

Finally, "The Cat's got no hair on" is to the tune of the Keel Row and the lyrics can be found on the usual-suspect folk-song sites. Teach it to small children whose parents you want to annoy.

Finally, a few weeks after I posted this a helpful reviewer - signed in as a guest, so I can't give easy credit - pointed out that in '85 Employment Tribunals were still called Industrial Tribunals. Which I should have known, as I was actually in practise when the name changed in '98. In my defence, however, my answer to all employment law questions has always been 'walk down the hallway and ask an actual employment lawyer'. Not least because they have the best stories about Stupid Shit Clients Do. I'm not editing the text, since I reckon if I forgot, so did Mal.

Fic recommendation: since we're at a bit of a transition point in the story, let's take a break for some comedy. Minor Incident, 1982 by Right What is Wrong as your appetiser, Oh God Not Again by Sarah1281 for a main course, and The Girl Nobody Knows A Soliloquy by Technomad for your dessert. All on FFN to my certain knowledge, I haven't checked AO3 for them.


	8. Going Got Tough, the Tough Went Shopping

DISCLAIMER: Does Gringotts call itself a bank when literally none of of the services it offers - secure storage rental, gambling and curse-breaking - are core banking services? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Because it's Christmas Eve and you've all been such good boys/girls/others, and because I'm currently working on Chapter 15 which is far more buffer than anyone could reasonably need, here's an ahead-of-schedule chapter by way of a bit of a Brucie Bonus.

* * *

Chapter 8

"_It turns out that the Leaky Cauldron does a perfectly acceptable - it's a solid seven, a good drink but nowt to write home about - pint of mild, which steadies Vernon down because, well, anyone who brews beer that good can't be all bad no matter how much weird foreign writing there is on the pewter tankard. Amused at how undemanding my host's taste in beer is and his dismissal of anglo-saxon futhorc ale-runes as foreign when they're more English than he is, I steer us out into the alley and push some magic through Vernon's fingers to open the archway._

"_Welcome to Diagon Alley," I whisper to myself."_

-oOo-

First impression: it doesn't _actually_ look all that magical. Quite a lot of towns that didn't get the full attention of the Luftwaffe's Urban Planning Department have a street or two that dates back to the 17th century or before - York and Chester practically consist of them - and they're invariably full of twee little tearooms and shops full of tourist tat. Diagon Alley is that, but with really convincing CGI ported into the real world.

I knew that it was a bit less impressive than the job the movie set designers did - I have Tom's memories of the place, after all - but apparently his recollections of the place were coloured by glee at having his feeling of being _special_ affirmed, along with the sense of having a place among other _special_ people. Even with all his personality disorders, he had the orphan's deep-rooted want for a sense of belonging. Not having the same hangups - my own hangups are _far_ more socially-acceptable, thank you very much - I don't see it through the same lens and I'm a little underwhelmed.

What _is_ living up to expectations is the amount of magic I can hear. It's like being in a breezy forest with a fast-moving stream through it and every species of bird ever trying to find a mate in the trees. Hopefully one gets used to this sort of thing, because I can't pick out any useful information from the babble and it's apt to be distracting.

_Less gawking, more forward momentum,_ I tell myself, and start walking. Harry's assessment - in the books - of wizarding Britain as being a bit extra in the clothes department is measured against his upbringing as an isolated kid in one of the more painfully upper-middle-class conformist bits of Surrey, which would be a contender for most tight-arsed county in England if Buckinghamshire didn't exist. Most of the shoppers and strollers I see wouldn't attract more than a second glance outside on the Charing Cross Road, and a few streets over in Covent Garden or Soho not even that.

Most of the robes, absent the colour, wouldn't look out of place outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, at a University graduation ceremony or at the altar of a local parish church. The dress sense on display isn't so much bizarre as a few hundred years out of date: judicial, academic and clerical robes are basically just business dress from centuries ago. And, bluntly, in a city as multicultural as London there are probably neighbourhoods where this sort of thing is someone's regular Sunday Best.

Once I'm no longer hung up on the robed individuals, I notice that they're only about two thirds of the people I see. The rest are in varying states of muggle attire. The ones that wouldn't pass muster in Little Whinging would at least do all right at a Charles Dickens fan convention.

Gringotts is my natural first stop and I step out smartly toward the only big marble edifice I can see. I've managed maybe a dozen paces before I get bumped by a poncy-looking article in a frock-coat. Add 'Samuel Pepys impersonator' to the list of types on display.

"Watch your step, mudblood," he snarls at me.

It's an important principle of life that while he who throws the first punch has lost the argument, he's well on the way to winning the fight. Tom had this trick that he first developed in the orphanage that basically throws a wave of magic into the voice, compelling submission and obedience with a side order of fear. I haven't had chance to practise it - who on? - but I give it a go. "Voetsek, aap!" I'm probably horribly misusing the afrikaner invective, but who cares? I need words with a bit of bite to carry the aggression.

The Pepys impersonator - the mass of hair looks like it's his own, not a full-bottomed wig, poor attention to detail that man - blanches and begs my pardon, backing up. Clearly I'm a natural at this.

"Ag, _Well_ you might apologise," I say, adding another belt of nasty magic voice and getting in his personal space a little as I move on. As I pass him, I have to suppress a twitch of surprise. _Malignity_. Not nearly as strong as Harry's scar, but definitely the same sensation. I don't break stride - waddle, rather, I'm modelling Vernon Dursley for my adoring public today - but take a moment or two to think as I'm closing on Gringotts. It felt like the scar, but weaker. If that's the signature of the _maker_ rather than the _thing_ then I may just have sensed a Death Eater's Dark Mark. That a flourishing of one of Tom's tricks visibly frightened him is a point in favour of that conclusion, certainly.

(Hopefully I haven't started a rumour. _The Dark Lord is back, and this time he's FAT!)_

I didn't pick it up until I was within inches of the bugger, but it was quite clear. I'll have to wait until I can make the acquaintance of Snape or Malfoy before I can be sure, of course - they're the two marked Death Eaters I'm pretty sure I can recognise from description alone.

What to do with this information is a tricky question, of course. Of course, I don't buy the 'I was mind-controlled' defence. I'm of the view that it should shortcut the trial straight to incarceration with no possibility of release on license. Someone genuinely susceptible to mind control to the point of joining a mashup of insurgency and criminal conspiracy isn't safe to be let out, any more than the inmates of Broadmoor Hospital are.

The point is, I'm wondering if I'm in the position of a german jew with the ability to detect Gestapo agents? Sure, I could use it for evasion, but since I know what's coming I can get some retaliation in first if I'm sneaky about it.

I'm arrive at the steps of Gringotts and put that line of thinking aside. While I've never been one for a soft approach to crime and punishment, going straight to vigilantism like that might just be a knee-jerk reaction to the vile shit I've had to watch in Tom's memories. Best solution would be to infiltrate the wizarding world, reform it to an acceptable standard of criminal jurisprudence, and hang the whole boiling of the buggers in a professional, organised and properly legal manner.

Whatever.

Gringotts manages the impressive feat of looking more like a bank than most actual banks do, even the overdone neoclassical ones that got built in Victoria's reign. I've no idea if they offer actual banking services, the books only show them offering secure storage and archaeological salvage with a possible option on gambling. Only one of these falls under what I'd understand as banking, even with the fairly generous definition of the term one acquires working in the City of London, where banking also seems to include 'being an insufferable twatbag' and 'doing a shitload of cocaine even when it's a school night.' Maybe I just knew the wrong bankers, or maybe there's a _reason_ that 'merchant banker' became a piece of rhyming slang.

It's quiet, with short queues at the tellers' windows. The innovation of a reception desk hasn't got as far as the goblins yet, so I pick a queue at random.

"Next!" The teller is a goblin: short, surly and ugly, one each, dressed in a pinstripe suit (the movies got that bit right, at least). My understanding of goblins comes entirely from the books, where they get a bad press, and Tom's memories, where they get a _worse_ press. Since all of Tom's acquaintances were racist fuckwits, I'm not taking any of it as good coin. Short and ugly is a given, but then they're a different species, and for all I know a lady goblin would find this chap dreamy as all get-out. Surly I can understand: while I have some prejudices on the subject of bankers regardless of species (there are probably some decent ones, but I've never had more than hearsay as to their existence) I think that if I had to deliver customer service to a lot of racists who hate me I'd probably bin my best sunday manners too.

I drop a wad of twenties on the counter, three hundred quid. "I'd like that changed for Galleons, please, and I have two questions about Gringotts services. I'm new in town, you see."

"Sixty galleons," the goblin says, counting the notes and coins off with commendable quickness, "your questions?" The surliness dials back a notch, I see. Whether it's down to me being brisk and to the point or distancing myself from the general run of gits he has to deal with I have no idea.

"First, can you cash a cheque drawn on a muggle bank?" It'll be a lot more convenient than having to get cash on the way to the Alley, after all. And the answer will tell me if Gringotts is a real bank and not just a storage firm with a pretentious name.

"Yes, up to the limit of your cheque guarantee card and subject to a small fee as you aren't a customer here. For customers we impose a limit of the value of your vault contents, which become security for your cheque until it clears. Unless you're banking with Coutts, in which case we are able to clear your cheque at the counter and waive Gringotts fees. For your general fund of information, Coutts are partly goblin owned and waive their usual wealth requirement for magical customers doing business in the muggle world. Ask for the Special Circumstances Customer Office. Your second question?"

"Does the exchange rate for galleons fluctuate?"

"No. Fixed by treaty with the Ministry of Magic. If that will be all?"

"It is. Thank you and good morning."

"Good morning. Next!"

So, what have we learned, class? First that no, Gringotts isn't necessarily a real bank itself but they do do business with at least one. Possibly more than one if Coutts has become part of a conglomerate: I can't remember when they got bought out in my own timeline. Certainly they were part of the NatWest group by the mid nineties. Also, being able to get a Coutts card will make Petunia come over all vaporous. They're the Royal Family's bankers, to name only the most prestigious, and there's nowt like snobbery for mill-town lasses that think they've made good.

The bit about there being at least one goblin stake in the regular banking world - how they manage that around the Statute of Secrecy is doubtless fascinating - tells me that the goblins are up to something. Coutts was founded around the same time as the Statute, I'd have to look it up to know the precise date, and why would they need a foot in the door of muggle finance if they were wholly respecting magical secrecy? I'm willing to bet there hasn't been a wizarding-goblin conflict since then largely because the goblins are bypassing wizards entirely for their surface-world trading needs, whatever the actual substance of their complaints about not being allowed wands. That teller was quite quick to tell me how to do business on that side of things, and not just in the sense of selling the services of a partner firm.

The important bit, though, is the fixed exchange rate. Unless literally every goblin ever born is a complete _idiot_ the Galleon is fiat money by the back door. If coins that size and heft-in-the-hand are five quid's worth of gold the periodic table is lying to all of us. At 1985 prices a fiver will buy you less than a fortieth of an ounce. (I'd looked it up that morning, it was a bit over £230 at Friday close.) Add a bit, because of magic to make your bit-more-than-a-dust-speck of gold look bigger and feel heavier, layer on enchantments to stop clever buggers like me from melting them for the bullion and discovering the trick, and you've got the world's first fractional reserve specie. Inflation is letting the goblins recover more and more gold from the coinage they make for wizards.

Obviously I don't _know_ this in the sense of having evidence, but any other explanation of them being able to issue gold coins bigger than poppy seeds at a fiver sterling per each requires literally every goblin in a position of responsibility to be thicker than a yard of lard and twice as ignorant. Since we have goblins who can make, and keep quiet, investments in the above-ground financial services industry, we can discount the 'all goblins are idiots' hypothesis.

Conclusion: I need a vault at Gringotts _only_ as a safe deposit box, not a place to keep money. In the event of me becoming real enough to have money of my own, it's going in a proper bank and I'll change what I need when I need it to make purchases from wizards. Should also look into getting the Potter vault similarly shifted to somewhere it can be suitably invested, because a stack of gold coins in a hole in the ground is only slightly better than the same pile of gold stuffed into the mattress.

I'm going to leave the economic insanity you get from putting magic into the mix for another time. The shops, at least, work the regular way for all that they shouldn't in what _ought_ to be a mostly post-scarcity economy.

Outside in the Alley again, I go raid Flourish and Blotts and blow nearly thirty galleons on a reading list I compiled from Tom's later years at Hogwarts and things he found in self-study after leaving. Mostly magical theory in the two big wandwork subjects, but there's arithmancy, runes and even some divination in there. Potions is largely missing, since Tom took the view that apothecaries existed to supply most of his needs leaving him to focus on poisons. I'm going to have to go at _that_ subject from first principles. I also find "Spells At High Noon, the Western Witch's Guide To Magical Gunplay" by I. Garrett, and I'm too amused by the title to resist.

The big one, though, is a three volume encyclopedia of magical metrology called Magic of Measurement, which some absolute _god_ among men - he uses an obvious _nom de plume_ or I'd be adding him to my christmas-card list - compiled in the 1950s from separately-published monographs from the preceding couple of hundred years. He also included material and commentary from everyone he could badger into picking up their quill, there are some heavyweight names from around the wizarding world between these covers.

It contains spells and techniques to measure and analyse spells, enchantments and what have you, all collected in one handy reference set. It's not popular, because if you want to _do_ anything with the information you develop you generally have to have your wizardly skills and drills up to the level where you could have brute-forced your way through the problem without analysing it anyway. This was Tom's approach, much good though it did him. In theory at least this book should let me figure out the spells on Number Four, at least as to the general effect if not the details: if that reveals a need to do anything I can direct my studies accordingly.

I tip the pimply-faced youth at the cash register a couple of galleons to make me up a shrunken parcel of all my purchases except the Garrett book, which I keep out for reading on the train home. It's probably utterly puerile of me, but the idea of having a pair of enchanted six-shooters has an appeal rooted in decades of enjoying cowboy movies. _It's High Noon, you death-eatin' varmint_.

I mean to pass the rest of the day window-shopping: absent immediate need all I really want is a notion of what there is to be had and where to go for it. The most obviously useful tool, a pensieve, you pretty much can't buy off the shelf. You either make your own or engage an enchanter to do a custom job and it's generally buried with you, since using someone else's is believed to carry the risk of their thoughts infecting yours. Which I'm risking _quite _enough already, thank you. The Hogwarts pensieve, with its library of memories from Headmasters-emeritus, is famously unique in not doing that. The secret of how the trick is done is regrettably lost to the ages and not obvious to nondestructive examination.

There's one thing that I _have_ to have, though, and I'm really not sure how this interaction is going to go. So I'm getting it out of the way before too many more people have seen Vernon's face in Diagon Alley.

The bell linked to the door of Ollivanders tinkles as I walk in, and the magical racket of the Alley fades. Inside the magical 'noise' is more like a thousands-strong choir all humming together under their breaths. The effect is quite beautiful, ethereal yet strong. I don't see Ollivander himself at first, and wait by the door. I rather mislike being startled at the best of times, and I don't want to have any kind of strong reaction amid _this_ much magic.

"Good morning!" Ollivander himself emerges from the rear of the shop. He looks for all the world like Alan Ford playing Brick Top in Snatch, just with eyes that are actually like that rather than seen through thick spectacles. The mannerisms remind me of the kind of enthusiastic older dons one occasionally meets at Oxford; a soft-spoken mask of cheery _joie de vivre_ hiding a mind like a mighty and intricately-wrought engine that would _dismember _you if you turned up to a tutorial unprepared. It stands to reason that a magical nation's premier toolmaker would have the same air about him as some of the cleverest people I've ever met, I suppose.

"Good morning," I say, returning the greeting, "Mr. Ollivander, I presume?"

"Indeed, and you appear to have the advantage of me - ?" He trails off the implied question. I figure I'm best off giving my _nom de guerre_ since it's not actually Vernon in here to make a purchase.

"Reynolds, Malcolm Reynolds. As you might imagine, I'm looking for a wand."

"Well, Mr. Reynolds," oh good, he's not one of those over-friendly knobsticks who insists on first-name terms on first acquaintance, "wands are very much my métier, and may I presume from your accent that you're not at all connected to the Gloucestershire Reynoldses?"

"It's likely I'm not, it's a surname with many points of origin after all. My own people are from all over Natal, mostly around Piemburg. So, wands? I'll have to admit I was educated in a tradition that didn't use wands," because magic was _fictional_ where I grew up, "but mean to learn, if it's possible this late in life?"

"Why, it is, certainly, although it's been a long time since I heard of anyone doing so, it's certainly possible, yes - I presume you're past the age where you need reminders as to safety precautions?" His tone turns teasing at the end, there, and I detect a hint of the celtic fringe behind the studied elocution. Cornish, if I'm any judge.

I deploy Vernon's salesman's chuckle. "I hope so, and not yet at the age where there's no fool like an old fool."

Ollivander has a salesman's chuckle of his own. Clearly, we both know what we're about and this is looking like it'll be a smooth transaction. "Well, since you don't _have_ a wand hand yet, which do you write with?" He's fishing his tape measure out of his pocket.

"My right, although I'm accustomed to working spells with both hands, if that makes a difference?"

"Wand-work is _considerably_ different from the African tradition, I'm given to understand - rather a specialist, I must perforce rely on what others tell me about matters outside wandlore - and you will develop a wand hand and use it exclusively. There are supporting gestures with the off hand for advanced spells which you may find either easy to master or false friends, accounts do rather vary. Now, if you would be so good as to hold still with your arms a little away from your body - yes, just so - we may take your measurements." The tape flutters from his hands and starts writhing around me. It's not unlike holding still for the tailor and involves just as little note-taking on Ollivander's part.

"Now," he says as the tape gets on with it and he starts pulling boxes from apparently-random spots on the shelves, "Perhaps a little digression on wandlore?"

I nod my assent. While the prospect of an introduction to the subject from an acknowledged expert isn't to be sniffed at, I don't want to disturb the tape in its work. It might be purest boffo to give Ollivander some thinking time, but if it's not then I want the job done right.

"First, as you're already quite aware, a wand is not _necessary_ to magic, but it is _sufficient_ to almost every task one might encounter. To channel and to focus is the _raison d'etre_ of the wand that chooses you, Mr. Reynolds, but it achieves so much more than that. Magic is worked with many tools, but the wand is able to stand in for the _platonic ideal_ of the tool _in rerum natura_. Athames, batons, rods and staves, the fly-whisk of ancient Axum, the lamens and amulets and other paraphernalia of ceremonial magic, all are subsumed in the modern wand. My family have made all of these tools over the centuries, but for over a thousand years we have laboured to perfect the wand, itself the perfection of the magical tool. And what is man, if not a user of tools? Why, the natural philosophers accord the status of 'higher animal' to any creature able to use even rudimentary tools. In short, once a wand has chosen you, the limit on how you use it is your imagination alone."

He continues in this vein for a while, bustling about his shop and gathering more wands for the pile of possibilities on his counter, and I am _hugely_ entertained. Ollivander is animated, engaging, and passionate about his subject: for spectacle there's not a lot to touch an expert in the grip of enthusiasm for teaching his subject. Amid the almost-poetry there's a few useful nuggets of wandlore. He doesn't _really_ believe wands are sentient, but they do respond to stimuli and their surroundings in quite spooky ways and imprint on their owner to greater or lesser extents. Some combinations of wood and core are reliable and predictable in their quirks and little 'extras', others very much vary according to who wields them, and none are ever less variable than any item made from organic material. And the wizard a wand will choose is _never_ wholly predictable despite the huge mental library of rules-of-thumb and predictive techniques that the Ollivanders have amassed over the years.

"So, Mr. Reynolds, with that all said, is there a particular field of magic that you have an affinity for? Any hint as to where we should be looking for your match will help."

I consider for a moment. The magic I can do without needing formal spells strikes me as a place to start, and Tom wasn't actually lying when he said that Dumbledore explained it as primitive transfiguration. "My earliest memories of doing magic," I say, meaning last month but it's not like Ollivander knows that, "are of performing what you'd call primitive transfigurations. Psychokinesis and related disciplines. I also have an inborn knack for mental magics, I don't know the name you have for it here - ?"

"Legilimency is the most commonly spoken-of art in that suite of magics." Ollivander's manner is considerably less animated now we're off the subject of wands.

"From _legere_ and _mens, _one presumes," I say, adopting a musing tone to sell the impression of me as a foreigner a bit harder. "Literally 'to read the mind', as good a way to describe it as any, hotly though my tutor in the matter would deprecate such a description."

"I've also heard it characterised as inaccurate," Ollivander allows, "but beyond the practise of the opposing art of occlumency, largely for the psychic health benefits, I confess myself ignorant as to why that should be so."

"Absent a lengthy seminar in the subject, it's tricky to explain," I tell him, although the main problem is that phrasing 'browsing a badly-organised haphazardly cross-linked mixed-media database while navigating a poorly-designed _sui generis_ graphical user interface unique to each brain you get access to' in a way that a wizard would understand is a non-trivial task, "Which is, I rather suspect, why terms like 'mind-reading' and 'legilimency' aren't more loudly objected to. A word is needed, after all, and as long as everyone understands what the referent is the precise content of the label matters little."

Ollivander gives a little chuckle. "Well, for low-energy applications like the magics of the mind, it pains me to admit that one wand is as good as another. Transfiguration, however, is rather more spectacular as it were. You have advanced your study of the art beyond your childhood affinity?"

"I have," I allow. The water-cooling spell is, if I'm applying my imperfect grasp of magical theory correctly, a transfiguration. As is the light spell: _lumos_ charms light from the caster's wand, while the one I've learned does something transfigurative to the air around my hand to make it give off light. Memo: buy a prism and see what the difference is, and possibly pick up a clue as to what the spell is _actually_ doing. Also, learn more spells.

Ollivander nods. "All of the African schools are noted for it, even here in Britain among those who pay attention to what is going on overseas."

"Indeed," I say, "That and _muti_, which I believe you call potions here." Not that I know any such thing other than second-hand through Tom's reading and general knowledge, but I'd heard of _muti_ even in my first life albeit in the context of traditional and herbal medicine.

"The arts outwith wand-magic I pay as little attention to as I can get away with, to be frank. To uphold the Ollivander reputation - which has been generations in the building - I find it pays to _focus_." He shrugs as he says this. Clearly, this is a man who sorts the world into 'wands' and 'everything else,' and for all it makes him a bit of a one-track conversationalist it's very reassuring when you're in his shop looking to make a purchase. He brightens considerably as he opens one of the boxes he's laid out on his counter and offers it to me. "To business, however. This is Acacia, Acacia nilotica specifically, with unicorn hair. Very much a wand for a wizard of the subtler magics like the mind arts, but Acacia _is_ very picky so don't be disheartened if -"

The wand vibrates in my hand, like it's trying to get away. The sound of its magic is like that of a whining dog. "I don't think it likes me," I say, dropping it back in its box.

"A fussy wood, as I say. It is, however, one of the african woods I keep on hand and I have a sense that we might shortcut the search for your wand by starting with those." He smiles at me. "One develops an intuition about such things."

I hope it's intuition and not just the story I've told him, because while I _have_ spent time in Africa - a family full of engineers and builders meant that I spent bits of my childhood in expat communities on three continents including Africa - I have absolutely no roots there and have never even set foot in the nation I'm claiming to be from. Never mind that my claimed hometown is actually _fictional_.

I try a few more wands of Acacia species - one does actually come close, a longish one cored with the feather of a phoenix from the Deccan plateau - which causes Ollivander to give me an appraising look. Which broadens into a gleeful smile. "It appears that the process of fitting a first wand late in life is more of a professional challenge than I presumed it to be. Oh, we shall have fun, Mr. Reynolds. _Fun_."

We take a drunkard's-walk tour of Africa and the middle east via a couple of dozen of their tree species, and to my relief I note that the negative reactions are all quite tame - a protest in the sound of their magic and shaking or puffs of smoke or audible squeals and pops. Ollivander doesn't comment, so it would appear to be normal for adults to not have quite the same pyrotechnics as 11-year-olds when trying a wand that doesn't fit.

A pattern starts to emerge: the denser woods come closer, especially if formed into stiffer wands. Longer wands are better than shorter, which puzzles Ollivander and it turns out that wand length is broadly speaking related to physical build. Vernon is average height and fat: the wands, however, are looking for _me_, and I'm four inches taller than Vernon and rangy with it. The fact that that body is dead and in a different universe doesn't seem to make any odds. I explain that my current frame is the result of a long illness that I'm now over and determined to recover from with all haste. It is, from a certain point of view, true. Don't get much more ill than actually dead, after all.

Returning to the wands - Ollivander clearly knows his stuff and his stock, because we haven't exhausted the stack on the counter - we narrow it down to something dense, long and rigid - I keep a lid on the schoolboy humour, I don't doubt Ollivander has heard it all before - with a non-unicorn core. Unicorn-hair wands _all_ reject me right off the bat where the dragons are generally a little more open to the possibility before they decide I'm not the wizard for them. I hope it's just because I'm not really a horsey sort and long beyond childhood innocence. It'd be a shame if I missed out on a perfect wand just because I was possessing someone and the unicorns wanted no connection to me because of that.

That I've been able to get _something_ out of every phoenix-feather wand Ollivander has offered me is quite gratifying, though. They're potent symbols of goodness just like unicorns are, but they don't have the _naivety_ that the unicorn also symbolises. They embody destruction alongside justice and light, what with all the fire. The sun burns as well as giving life.

We discuss all of this as we go along, trading theories and giving Ollivander chances to expound on his obsession. When I mention what I've noticed about the unicorns and phoenixes, it has him all but hopping from foot to foot: apparently it was the last piece of whatever puzzle he was assembling in his head. "Just you wait, when your wand finds you it will be _spectacular_! Don't be alarmed if I have to go digging among the older stock, you may be among the rare wizards who actually _suit_ the other core materials that I no longer use. Before I go there, however, try this - African ebony, sometimes called Jackalberry. Thirteen inches even, with a primary feather from the indian phoenix you made acquaintance with earlier. A wand of will over the world, Mr. Reynolds, a wand that will clear the way to _any_ transfiguration."

_Oh. Oh my word, yes. YES._

_So THAT'S what Phoenix song sounds like._ Not just from my wand, but all the phoenix wands in the shop come in with harmonies and descants. Not audibly: it's the song of the magic in what is absolutely, no doubt, beyond all question, MY wand. I bring it up to the salute and relax into the tug on my magic.

_Snap-hiss_. A blade of humming, actinic light springs from the tip of my wand. The shop fills with the bright and bracing smell of ozone and we both squint against the glare. I know peace, and all is well. The merest effort of will, scarcely more than a formed decision, and the blade vanishes, leaving the shop momentarily silent of both magical and physical noise.

Ollivander is blinking. If the purple blotches in his vision are anything like mine, he'll not be seeing clearly for a bit yet. "Well, I've never seen a reaction like _that_ before, Mr. Reynolds. _Quite_ remarkable."

I think fast. "Actually a fairly simple, or should I say _uncomplicated_, transfiguration, a contained and sustained change of the air in a bounded space from one state of matter to another. High-energy gas plasma, somewhere between five and six thousand kelvin judging by the colour." I nod like I'm sure of my facts here. Not a bad little line of bullshit for straight off the cuff, though I do say so myself. "Have to admit I've never done it spontaneously before, nor quite so … so…" I let Ollivander give me an adjective.

"Wondrously, Mr. Reynolds, _wondrously_. One of the great pleasures of my calling, now, is the joy on the faces of children when they get their first wands and the bright and beautiful celebrations of the wands as they choose their witch or wizard. _That_, however, is one I will never forget. Tell me, do you go to the muggle cinema at all?"

Okay, _that_ came as a bit of a surprise. Not difficult to answer, though: "Ag, Of course," I say, "why do you think I've been working on spells to make my own lightsaber? Not that I'm quite sure what I did just then to get the bleddy thing to _work_." I'm willing to bet there are a few wizards working the same problem.

We both have a bit of a laugh about it. More elegant magic for a more civilised age, and so forth. Ollivander quite cheerily tells me that if I ever manage to figure out what I just did and how to replicate it, he wants to be first in line for his own.

My wand is thirteen inches, of which four are carved into a grip styled with simple chequering and a sun-disc rondel at the butt. There are stubby, stylised wings forming a sort of understated quillon arrangement, continuing the sun-and-phoenix motif. The business end is a simple taper from about half an inch at the quillons to a bluntish tip a bit under a quarter inch round. The wood is a deep, rich, brown with a slight reddish tint, and a strip of blond grain runs from rondel to tip, twisting slightly clockwise as it goes. Which is good: stripes make things go faster, it is well known. And also symbolise sun-rays: the artistry Ollivander has put into the piece uses the innate character of the wood and is elegant and coherent. I approve.

It's also cored with a phoenix known for being quite profligate with its feathers: Ollivander doesn't mention the brother wand effect when he tells me this, I suspect because it's quite rare. Most wizards and witches never fight, and the odds of doing so against someone whose wand shares a core are pretty low even when they do. I suspect that at some point I'm going to have to take up arms on account of Harry, however, so Note To Self and all that. There's bound to be a monograph somewhere on the priori incantatem effect out there somewhere, so I shall keep an eye out.

While I'm taking the time to get acquainted with my wand and resisting the urge to stroke it and call it _my precioussss_, Ollivander is tidying away the rejected wands. Oddly, he puts them back with fussily-precise levitation spells - they sort of tinkle at the upper reaches of my magical 'hearing' - despite having got them all out or down by hand. We're interrupted by a tinkle of real sound.

Ollivander finishes his tidying with a final flourish - I really like the sound of his magic, all neat and precise and everything-just-so - and calls out "With you in a moment, Mrs. Weasley."

I take a moment to put my new wand - _preciousssss_ \- in its box, which allows me to ensure my face is composed before I turn. "Good timing," I say, "we really did just finish fitting me." I give her Vernon's best sales smile, toned down a bit. I'm pretty sure she's not in the market for anything with indexable tungsten carbide inserts.

Molly Weasley: so I presume, redheaded housewifey-looking witches with the surname Weasley can't be _that_ common. "Well, my commiserations on the loss of your old wand, at any rate. Did you get sorted out?"

"Sorted out, yes, old wand, no. I was taught in a tradition that doesn't use them, and while I'm in this part of the world I decided I'd learn. Never too old, and all that. So this is my first one." I give the box a tap with my forefinger. I think I'm a bit too old to be proudly showing off my new toy to every grown-up I meet, so I leave it in the box.

"Well, fancy that," presumably-Molly says. "Are you staying in England long?" She's accompanied by a nerdy-looking teenager, nearly full-grown and as redheaded as she is. At this date and that age he seems likely to be Bill, and he's clearly got some maturing to do before he's the cool older brother from the books. He also perked up at the mention of a different tradition of magic, and looks like he's dying to ask but daren't speak without permission in front of his mother. _Know the feeling, kid_.

"No firm plans either way; staying with relatives at the moment, they're muggles as I believe you'd call them in this country?"

"Oh. I'm sure that's nice for you. Family _is_ important, after all, whatever their circumstances." I can see her writing me off as 'foreign weirdo, likes muggles', just from the look on her face. Legilimency is a lot less necessary than you'd think, with most people. I don't mind, it stops her fishing for interesting gossip as women in small communities are much wont to do.

I turn to Ollivander. "How much do I owe you for the wand? And, ah, what accessories and so forth should I get?"

"Seven galleons, and you'll need wand polish - any beeswax and turpentine polish will do in a pinch, but something specifically for wands is always best - and either buy a holster or talk to your tailor about sewing wand pockets in your clothes. I recommend against trouser pockets, by the by. While that _is _a sturdy wand, you'll quickly find its limits if you sit on it. I don't sell either of those things: I've barely room for the wands as it is."

"Good to know, I mean to explore the alley today so no doubt I'll find what I need. Seven galleons is rather less than I was expecting - ?" I let the question hang as I fish the coins out of my pocket to pay for the precious - I mean, _wand_.

"I price first wands in service to the arithmancy of the matter, rather than the economics. Price is rather more variable for replacements and second wands: that one would be two hundred and eleven galleons on that basis." Sounds like the pricing follows the arithmancy there, too, because I'm pretty certain that's a prime number.

"Good to know. A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Ollivander, and a good -" I check my watch - "Afternoon to you. And to you ma'am, sir." I address the presumably-Weasleys on my way out of the shop.

I get a round of good-afternoons in return, and as I'm leaving, I hear her say, "Professor McGonagall owled to say that Bill here needs a wand fitted for his NEWTs. He's done very well with his uncle Gideon's wand, but…" and the door closes behind me. It _was_ Molly Weasley, to a high degree of confidence. The slight cooling when I mentioned muggles fits as well: she's got that muggle/squib second cousin that 'we don't talk about' and makes Arthur keep his muggle stuff in the shed. I know the type. Wouldn't dream of being rude to a muggle face-to-face, but deeply xenophobic all the same. Just too well-brought-up to be actually _racist_. As she gets older she'll either mellow or turn into your classic Racist Grandparent.

I was quite fortunate to not actually have one of those, although the immigrant side of the family had some pithy observations on the subject of the English. If you wanted racism in my family generally you wanted my great grand-aunt with the fascinating fund of stories about that nice Mr. Mosley. Rather soured me on the whole subject of the extreme right that the first example I ever met was slightly senile and smelt of wee.

That aside, and confident that Molly will only note the resemblance if she ever meets the real Vernon Dursley - he won't be a genial South African wizard but _will_ be a lot thinner - I have a bit of a meander and pick up the wand polish as Ollivander recommended. Since I intend to keep the wand under lock and key at home a holster would be a waste. Stopping only for another pint at the Leaky on my way out - Vernon seems to be over his fear, but wants another drink and I rather fancy one myself - I head back to Little Whinging.

I have a bit over an hour on the train ride home to read the Garrett book, and it's slim so I manage to get from cover to cover. Turns out Pat Garrett - yes, _that_ Pat Garrett - had a daughter who faked her death to leave the non-magical world behind partway through her time at Ilvermorny, and went on to become an Auror, following _mutatis mutandis_ in Daddy's footsteps. I learn that while this (probably) isn't the movie continuity, apparently MaCUSA is a thing anyway, although what I deduce about the history of it is very different from what got posted on Pottermore. I'd need a history book to get the _actual_ story, of course. Her book, a slim volume with a fascinating chapter on the use, maintenance and enchantment of black-powder revolvers, is actually more about defences against firearms if you have a wand. They're comprehensive, and Ms. Garrett is quite clear that bringing a pistol to a wand fight isn't sensible.

Long-range rifle fire is highly effective against an unaware wizard target, but "dirty business" by the standards of the more chivalrous age she was writing for. Reading between the lines, I rather suspect that her duties as an Auror involved more than one occasion of such dirty business, on which point I decline to make up my mind. On the one hand, Aurors are tasked with going after the worst of the worst. On the other, the line between law enforcement and political black-bagging isn't as clear as it should be in the wizarding world.

What is interesting is that she's firmly of the view that any undertaking to deal with dangerous magical creatures should involve absolute _hails_ of bullets. Destructive spells are all very well, but pulling a trigger is much much easier and if you've got the preparation time to enchant your ammunition your options become much more numerous. She intersperses her opinions on the subject with some absolutely _ripping_ yarns, my personal favourite being the one where she and her team 'borrowed' a couple of M1895s from the USMC and used them to great effect against a horde of walking dead (she doesn't call them inferi, and it may well be that in animating cadavers as in skinning cats, there's more than one way to do it) in Louisiana in 1910.

As she put it, "Fire spells surely stop them, but if you've chopped them up with machine-guns enchanted the way we done (sic) they get a whole lot less troublesome to burn." There's a touch of polemic in the concluding chapter to the effect that firearms ought to be regarded as a necessity, lawful to trade with the nomaj for, because "to a nomaj, your wand is no more than a stick, but if you have a pistol to pull, it carries authority with them." I suspect I'd've liked Ida Garrett, she's got a practical way about her.

Back once more in Little Whinging, I've arrived in time to take the boys out from under Petunia's feet for a nice long session of working our way through the Ladybird books. This would normally be time for a nice long walk or a trip out somewhere, but Vernon's fitness level isn't up to two excursions in one day. Yet. He's improving, and while I'd _like_ to go digging in the potions books for something that'd help, I've no idea where to even _start_ looking to predict the effects of potions on a muggle. Going to have to do it the hard way, alas.

Between my own efforts, school and (surprisingly) Petunia pitching in when I've been out, Harry is able - with help - to read the first few Peter and Jane books _and_ Green Eggs and Ham. Dudley's improving too: four weeks of not being rewarded for being a little gobshite hasn't quite turned him around but it has taken away a lot of the distractions from learning at school. I think he's feeling a bit more secure in himself, too, now he knows there are limits and where they are, so he's less inclined to kick off in the first place.

Once the boys are educated, fed, allowed their evening telly privileges and put to bed, I lock up the magical paraphernalia - the escritoire-thingy has a secure cabinet in it that should suffice to keep the boys out - but keep the first volume of Magical Measurement out to read.

Petunia sniffs a bit at the sight of the magical text, but lets me get on with it. I could ask for no better sign that she's getting with the program than that.

-oOo-

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AUTHOR NOTES:

While I know that the conversion rate of five quid to the galleon is _actually_ down to JKR having less grasp of numbers than a common goldfish, you can build a whole elaborate headcanon around how it comes to be that those big lumps of coined gold cost a fiver a pop. Debasing the coinage has a history going back to classical times - you can track the decline of the Roman Empire by the way the precious metal content of its coins drops over the years - and adding magic to the mix gives currency fraud a whole new range of options.

Gringotts not being a bank: I stand by this. They rent you a vault and unless you come in to check on it yourself they look in on it 'once every ten years or so' as Griphook tells Harry. Everything else we hear of Gringotts or 'the goblins' doing isn't actually banking or financial services (well, the gambling maybe, if you squint a bit and take an uncharitable view of what merchant banks do).

Goblins having a stake in muggle banks: this is pure headcanon on my part. If you live underground and want to trade with the surface you don't want to be doing it through wizards, who are various permutations of idiot, racist, and isolationist even _before_ you try and deal with whatever agenda they have. You don't want to be a primary-industry economy - that way lies poverty, unless you've got shitloads of oil in which case you have a whole _different_ set of problems - but you're culturally hampered in exporting finished goods because you don't like selling anything more than a lease-for-life. (Which isn't a uniquely goblin thing _at all_, as any lawyer who's learned more than the basics of estate planning will tell you.) That leaves you with financial and other services and as the Statute of Secrecy comes in, the modern banking industry is just getting going. A few investments on the ground floor and they're set. I picked Coutts because it was founded a couple of years after the Statute passed. And I firmly believe they got to invest by telling the founder of the bank they were jews who wanted their involvement kept quiet. Since he was a scot who'd likely never met a jew he just assumed that was what jews looked like and rolled with it. In a world where the good people of Hartlepool mistook a monkey for a Frenchman (and hanged him as a French spy, look it up, they're still being mocked for it to this day) it's not even that embarrassing an error.

Finally, firearms in Harry Potter stories. No, this isn't going to be one of those stories, although we see in Philosopher's Stone that some utter imbecile gave Vernon Dursley a Firearms Certificate so it's a possibility. It's just a worldbuilding detail, nothing to see here, move along.

Speaking of worldbuilding details: this chapter's fanfic recommendation is Potter Who And The Wossname's Thingummy by ForrestUUID, which is on FFN. It's a crossover with Doctor Who only in the most utterly technical sense, you don't need to know _anything_ about Who because neither does the Doctor in this one. He's come over all amnesiac and ends up at Hogwarts with all of the intelligence and curiosity he's famous for _anyway_. The writing is what I aspire to when I'm all grown up and it's the kind of fic that repays repeated re-readings because you pick up on _brilliant_ details that you missed last time around.


	9. Time spent in reconnaissance

DISCLAIMER: Does Dumbledore choose a situation for Harry despite a clear warning from a colleague that there are red flags and then do nothing about it for sixteen years? If so, I don't own Harry potter.

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Chapter 9

_Once the boys are educated, fed, allowed their evening telly privileges and put to bed, I lock up the magical paraphernalia - the escritoire-thingy has a secure cabinet in it that should suffice to keep the boys out - but keep the first volume of Magical Measurement out to read._

_Petunia sniffs a bit at the sight of the magical text, but lets me get on with it. I could ask for no better sign that she's getting with the program than that._

-oOo-

After putting Vernon to bed I make an attempt at reading the book in spirit form, having left it on the dining table for exactly this purpose. Conclusion: it's possible, and I'll be making use of this possibility, but _good grief_ it's a tiresome way to read. I'm used to having feedback from the book or screen I'm reading off - either the tactile impression of serious literature or the ability to tab away into another window for what-have-you. Somehow floating over a page and turning the pages by effort of will is a lot less satisfying. I'm reading, but not _enjoying_ it as I normally do.

By way of break I take a turn around the neighbourhood, listening for magic that's not the spells on Number Four - curiously, there's _nothing_ on Mrs. Figg's house except possibly whatever it is that makes the magical paraphernalia in her spare bedroom really, really quiet until you get very close. I've no idea whether it's a protective spell or just a normal characteristic of the magic stuff she's got. I can certainly hear Number 4 from quite a long way away. I can't plot the attenuation over distance, not having got to that bit in Magic of Measurement yet, assuming there is one. If it turns out to be inverse-square I will be decidedly grumpy about it: I want my magic _magical_ damn it, not just based in physical laws that ran and hid when it looked like science was coming.

Back in the house I check on the good behaviour sticker chart Petunia now has attached to the fridge with a couple of magnets. I'd suggested it as a way for Dudley to earn the Optimus Prime I'd bought him, while Harry shyly asked for 'a book' as his prize. They've both managed a day free of the naughty step while I've been out, so they're both a star closer to their prizes. Petunia's playing favourites for Dudley slightly, but I'm not too worried about that. If Harry's finding it harder to earn stars for the chart, he'll try harder: I suspect the most we can hope for with Dudley is 'not in jail before thirty' because while Smeltings does appear to be able to polish turds like Vernon and Dudley, the power of Old Boys Clubs is already waning and won't be worth the price charged by the time Dudley finishes. He'll get his A Levels and a degree from a second or third tier university and hopefully a slot in a graduate trainee program somewhere. Harry's got a _lot_ more potential and a bit of frustration now will pay off in diligent work habits later.

I'm woolgathering, of course. Not needing to sleep leaves me with a _lot_ of time to fill and I'd been hoping to get a great deal of reading done until I discovered that disembodied reading is a massive chore. I'm going to get back to it in just a minute, honest. Then I remember something I said idly, almost in jest, to Petunia, about giving Vernon a chance to talk in his dreams. I've not visited Harry in his dreams since the night I ate Tom, but with the ability to apparate in spirit form (I've not dared try it while possessing Vernon, since Tom managed to fatally splinch the first host he ever tried to apparate with.) I've been able to keep a regular check on Harry for nightmares.

However, now I've got Tom's skills, I can get into Vernon's dreaming mind. It'll be good practice for helping Harry - that first time was wing-and-a-prayer stuff - and while I'm not even close to being qualified for this, letting Vernon talk about what's bothering him probably can't _hurt_. And, probably more than I'd be comfortable admitting out loud, it _is_ an excuse not to float over the dining table enduring the work of reading without the corresponding pleasure, I pop upstairs to get started.

I've not actually peeped in on the sleeping Dursleys since those first few nights, and I'm pleased to see that they're a lot less separated while they sleep than they were. I still can't see any difference in Vernon's appearance, now I'm looking at him from the outside, but I've got him an appointment with a hospital dietitian. The cunning machines for quick ECGs haven't hit the market yet, so the only assessment I've got for his fitness is the one I can make from the inside: crap, but somewhat improved from the previous 'disastrous'.

Fortunately, he'd not got quite bad enough to be suffering with sleep apnea: sleep deprivation on top of everything else would have made him entirely intolerable. For now, he's getting actually restful sleep and not snoring. I drift close enough to pick him up and I'm in luck: he's already dreaming.

Inside his dream it's a corridor painted the pale green that is for some reason favoured by people doing the decor in institutions. There are schoolboys flowing past, their faces indistinct. They're not in the full Smeltings uniform - they don't make the boys wear the complete 18th century rig-out for classes any more, a change made during Vernon's father's time. Vernon's stood, a full-grown man, amid the boys rushing for their next class, plainly not knowing where to go. He's got an anxious look on his face and he's standing like a toddler paralysed by indecision.

And he's not just having the back-at-school dream, oh no. He's having the _no pants_ back at school dream. The saving grace of it is that Vernon's body image is based on his university days when he still boxed and played rugby: in his mind he's still that hefty boar of a man, no _great_ athlete, but he could pull his weight in the ring and on the pitch alike. I still didn't need to see a naked grown man in a school corridor.

_You're wearing clothes_, I think at him, and then he is. Sort of a blurry out of focus thing that could be a suit, could be pyjamas, like he's not quite sure what kind of clothes to dream up for himself.

I decide to help him along a bit. _Everything's going to be fine, you're here for a chat with a friendly face._

His clothes firm up. Slacks and a shirt and tie.

"Vernon," I say, "why don't you step into my office and we can have a bit of a chat, eh?"

It's a moment's imagination to create a door and beyond it Dr. Green's office. I liked Dr. Green, and not just for his not-a-foot-wrong professionalism, I suspect I'd've enjoyed his company outside a therapeutic context. (Which is either true or evidence of him being _really good at his job._) Desk with an anachronistic NHS-issue PC on it, small bookcase, and three large and comfy chairs. I dress myself in the appearance of Dr. Green - small, bearded, tweedy, with a generally serious demeanour. As well as setting the mood for my own benefit, it has the advantage of showing any possible legilimens a face that, like my own, won't exist for more than thirty years. The real Dr. Green, assuming this universe has one, is probably an extremely junior House Officer somewhere and may not even have decided to be a psychiatrist yet.

I always liked this office: it reminded me of the better tutorials I'd have during my student years. Academic, friendly, a learning-by-talking sort of place. Dr. Green had to retire with ill health before we finished, but it was a good place for me while it lasted. I imagine us seated rather than go through the usual politenesses. "What I'm hoping we can do, Vernon, is have you just talk about how you feel about your life."

There's a long silence. I was expecting this, Vernon's probably got Strong Views on headshrinkers and the people who go to them. Talking about your feelings? Lot of hippy nonsense. Probably.

"It's you, isn't it?" Vernon is suddenly pin-sharp, high resolution. Fully _present_. I wonder if this is what lucid dreaming looks like.

"Mmm?"

"I _know_ you think I'm stupid. I'm not as stupid as you think I am. I know what's going on."

_Ah_. He's recognised me through the Dr. Green disguise. "I rather hoped you did. I'm not going to be with you forever, Vernon."

"I wondered…" Long pause.

"Wondered?"

"Wondered if you being here meant I didn't have to do it any more." Another long pause. "Any of it."

Since I'm not actually in possession of Vernon right now, I'm not affected by his feelings, and so I maintain the cool clarity of my spirit existence. I do have an intellectual sort of sympathy for him, that tired-of-it-all sentiment is where suicidal thoughts often start. I let the silence drag on.

"Thought about doing a Reggie Perrin, you know." I nod, acknowledging what he's saying. It's good to know he was only thinking about _faking _his suicide, leaving his clothes on a beach somewhere. You can go a surprisingly long time on thoughts like that before you start thinking about Making It All Go Away in a more drastic and irrevocable fashion.

Another long silence.

"Know what you're doing for m'boy." Vernon says at length. He won't look at me while he speaks, but it's the most emotion I've seen him show in this dream. "Heard what you said to Pet about the way we were treating him. What you're doing, obvious now you point it out."

"I had to learn, too, you know. Nobody's a parent naturally, and it can be hard to accept that what your parents taught you wasn't right." I stop there. I probably should be talking less. Why did I think doing this was a good idea, again?

"You're a man, then. Not some, some … _creature_? Thought you were a devil of some kind at first."

"A man, yes. Much like you." Except, you know, better in every way, you tiny-minded gammon-faced imbecile. "Older, of course, and with a very different life. And I died, and was sent back, with only the knowledge I gained while alive."

"You were one of … them, though?" I've seen Vernon's memories of the two occasions he met James Potter, the only wizard with whom he was ever acquainted, and the two men didn't get on. Vernon had had no favourable impression of the wizarding world from Petunia even before his innate xenophobia kicked in, and Potter had no more notion of how to talk to a muggle than any other sheltered pureblood wizard. Petunia probably _could_ have rescued the situation - she certainly knew enough to explain away what Vernon took as mockery - but chose not to. There was nothing about any of it that was unsalvageable, had Petunia chosen otherwise. (There _was_ actually some thawing as regards Lily: they were back on exchanging-christmas-present terms by the time they were both pregnant with their sons.)

"I was, as it happens, not. I was a solicitor until I retired. Knew about the whole magic thing, was never a part of it."

That gets Vernon to look at me. "You've done magic, though."

"I have. Had to die and come back to do it, so I wouldn't recommend it."

"The thing with the wand, the Luke Skywalker thing. I _felt_ that."

I let myself smile. "Good, wasn't it?"

He nods. Spends some time in thought. "The one Pet's sister married. He was a complete _oik_."

"What makes you say that about him, Vernon?"

I can feel the memories churn within him. "Talked a lot of nonsense."

"It made sense in _his_ world. Yours wouldn't make sense in his, I shouldn't wonder. I've no personal experience, but I imagine the magic makes quite a lot of difference."

Vernon scoffs. And, to my quiet amusement, harrumphs.

I don't imagine I'm going to crack through his armour of ignorance by reasoned argument, that only works on the basically reasonable. Persuasion's probably going to be a long, slow slog too. Still, soonest begun, soonest done. Step one, find terms he understands to frame it in. "You've talked to the boffins in the design and development office at work, yes? Like they're talking a different language sometimes, isn't it?"

"I suppose. But they're boffins about something _useful_."

"Useful in a way you understand, certainly. Useful in a way I understand, too. I used to do a lot of civil engineering contracts and cases, I shouldn't wonder some of those projects used Grunnings products." I know they didn't, of course, but a little flattery won't do any harm in rapport-building. And I can see a way to bring this closer to home for him. "I couldn't tell you what useful magic James Potter knew, never met the man, or that I would understand the use of it even if he showed me. Petunia, though, she's got a touch of it, we think. Comes out in the garden and the greenhouse, you've seen how much better they are than any of the neighbours."

It's true, too. Number Four was new-built when the Dursleys moved in. Which meant the parts of the plot laid to garden were basically lawn turf laid over bare soil with builders' rubble churned into it. Even if it had been good soil to start with, all the crap in it from construction should have made it a difficult proposition for gardening for years, and all of the neighbours' gardens reflect that tiresome reality.

Petunia just … planted. And it all worked first time. I've no idea if it's magic or if she's just uncannily good, but I certainly never did that well in any garden I owned. I'm sticking with the magic explanation because Petunia's sense of gleeful vindication has done more to get her on-side than anything else I've said apart from the mean-spirited crack I made about Lily sending her regards.

"She's … one of them?" Vernon had promised not to hold Lily against Petunia, largely on Petunia's description of the student magic she'd seen. I imagine he's wondering if his wife's about to start wearing a pointy hat and doing things with toads.

"Not by their standards, but Petunia's quite right to say they put on airs. She didn't have the right sort of magic for their school, so she didn't matter to them. She's been getting that attitude from them since she was a little girl, so she was naturally bitter about it. Even though her version of it - which she didn't even realise she had - is undeniably _useful_."

"Will Dudley - ?"

"Not impossible, but I doubt it. You might have a magical grandchild at some point, though. Or a great grandchild, if you live that long."

A tension I hadn't noticed building goes out of him. "Want the boy to have a decent life. Want for nothing."

"Better than you had?"

"Of _course_. You've got different ideas than I had. _Modern_ ideas. When did you die?"

"Vernon, this is about you, not me. And my ideas aren't that modern, not at all. Dudley shouldn't want for his _needs_, and I assure you he doesn't need the amount of sugar you were letting him have. I could go on, but you've been present when I've been explaining this stuff to Petunia. You've been present when we've seen the results."

"He'll be a scrawny runt -" _And I've got you_, I realise. His sports as a young man were about strength, and he's got hopes for Dudley choosing the same ones. And since two of my children were into sports - more than I ever was - I've got a point of connection.

"He'll never be that, Vernon. He's inherited your build, no mistaking that. What he needs is the muscle to go with it, like you had ten years ago. Both my sons got their build from my mother's father, who was much like you. Built like brick shithouses, the pair of them. Younger of the two played lock for his school and university. Quite the sight on the school team, he was a head taller than anyone else on the field." Vernon perks up at that. _Oh, do we have a rapport now?_

"You played, yourself?" he asks.

"Rugger? No, only when they made me because it was what we were doing in games that week. Cricket was more the thing for me. Wasn't ever very good at it, either. Reserve for the school team in recognition of sheer enthusiasm for the game and pickup games in the park was about my speed."

"And your boys went out for rugger instead?"

"Just the younger of the two. Eldest didn't care for games all that much, more a fan of motor racing. Neither of them much liked cricket, only sport we all had in common was the clays. At which my daughter was the best out of the four of us, girl took to it like she was born with a gun under her arm."

Vernon actually chortles at that. "Was she sporty at all?"

"She rode, because all girls go through a horsey phase as far as I can tell, but she was the one who came out hiking with me most often. Helpful, too, she was the only one the bloody dog'd behave reliably for. Great big Alsatian cross he was, bit of husky and collie in him too, wilful as you please, took a lot of managing. Until my daughter took hold of his lead, at which point you could've had the bugger in the ring at Crufts for obedience." Pretty much any animal was like that with her. We used to tease her about being a Disney Princess in disguise.

We end up having quite a long conversation about Vernon's hopes for his son. And _that_ gets him talking about his own school days, and all I really have to do is nod, and hmm, and mildly agree in a couple of places that I've experienced something similar. When I tell him that it's all we've got time for this week, Vernon seems a little disappointed. _Got you!_

I've no idea what the time is outside, of course, and I let Vernon fade off into undreaming sleep while I scoot away - dawn is on the verge of breaking, making it a bit after six. I'll be getting Vernon up in half an hour or so.

I'm pretty sure I've just crossed an ethical line by starting that with Vernon: I don't even have a tithe of the education needed to be a proper therapist. I don't even know, really-and-truly, that there's no chance of harm. On the other hand, Vernon needs _something_ over and above being a passenger in his own life while I fix it as best I can and generally set a better example than he's had basically _ever_. If I keep it to regular friendly chats and just let him help himself by thinking out loud? Would that work? Help slightly? At least not do any harm?

It's a failing I've had for a long time, and nothing to do with any of my actual issues: a tendency to act first and agonise afterward. There's an old joke about the difference between a good billiards player and a bad one: good players chalk their cues before playing a stroke, and bad ones after. I'm going to have to monitor Vernon carefully to see how he's coping: I don't know what I could do to put right any harm I've done, but the bright side at least is that I don't see how I can be making him _worse_.

I look in on Harry, and he's peacefully asleep. It has been a month and the last of the scabs have dropped off his scar. It's pink rather than the angry red it used to be, and looks like a healing wound rather than an ominous mark. I go close to 'sniff' for evil - finding none - and am reminded of the encounter in Diagon Alley yesterday. I don't _know_ that I came in contact with an actual Dark Mark, but it strikes me that I should know more about the thing, what with having the knowledge somewhere in the wreckage of Tom's mind. I try for, and get, the knowledge of how to apply and use the Mark. I was hoping to get it without the associated experiential memories, but I'm just not that lucky. Tom designed a big old ceremony, with dead muggles and various disgusting ritual acts that were completely unnecessary to the actual marking, he just thought it was funny to get a lot of dignified pureblood wizards prancing about degrading themselves.

Oddly enough he hit on one of the things that nasty groups like the Death Eaters have done over and over again since time immemorial: get their new recruits to do something wildly transgressive to make them feel set apart from their old lives. At a guess - I'm not going over the whole lot because _yuck_ \- it let him know who was in it for the cause and who for the mayhem by observing their reaction to the ongoing fuckery. It'd only be a rough guide, of course, because the two aren't exclusive.

The essence of the thing is that underneath all the showmanship, the protean-charmed tattoo was actually an old Roman Republic slave-marking and control spell, the _Stigma Servus_, which never really went _in_ to fashion because a group of gladiators in Capua started the Third Servile War rather than submit to it. Two years of bloody insurrection later, the _Stigma_ was quietly shelved. Also, what with the magic tattoos being just the last straw, the legal condition of slaves began to be improved.

The effect of the mark was to allow a master to summon his slaves, bend their wills toward loyalty but not outright control them, and if he knew the right control spells, defend himself against them without need of weapons, inflicting debilitating pain, unconsciousness and brief bouts of paralysis. Tom was sensible enough to set his words of control in parseltongue, but other than that relied on security-through-obscurity to hide the fact that he'd hacked a back door into his minions' minds. If there was any long-term harmful effect on the slave from having the thing applied, the Romans either never found out or didn't record it. It may well also have been that every recipient died before any long-term problem could show up. Between the Servile War, the mass crucifixions that followed it, and the generally shitty conditions that slaves endured at that time, it's not like many of them saw their golden years.

I make a note of that: if we can stop Tom from coming back, publishing about the _stigma servus_ and the potential for bearers of the Dark Mark to eg. go berzerk would do a fair bit to curb their influence in wizarding society. It sidesteps the whole 'I was under the Imperius' bullshit into the bargain: it's not like slaves are usually _volunteers_, after all. Doesn't have to be true, either. In a society where Rita Skeeter can make a living doing what she does, innuendo and talking points will do most of the heavy lifting.

That detail taken care of, I take control of Vernon and get him out of bed at half six on the dot, just before Petunia's alarm goes off. I'm downstairs at the kitchen table with a cup of tea without really thinking about it - I might be a sleepless spirit, but Vernon takes a while to spin up to speed of a morning.

Petunia breaks the silence. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"What in particular? Fixing things up around here or just getting Vernon into shape?"

"Vernon first, I suppose."

I rock a hand back and forth. "A year or two, maybe? As soon as I can get a medical clearance for actual exercise - I'm seeing the dietitian this week and there's a full physical to go with that - I'm going to get him physically in shape. Let's say we'll review it after a year. I went into his dreams last night and had a chat, hopefully I can get him into the habit of actually thinking about how he feels and acts and that'll help him along a lot."

"He knows what's going on, then?"

"Yep. Turns out we have a few things in common - my second oldest played rugger just like he's hoping Dudley will, to pick just one. I should see which of the local clubs has a kids team he can get on. Little Lions, touch rugby, something like that. John didn't get into it until he was third year at secondary school and the PE teacher noticed he had a lad who was about half a scrum by himself, so I'm not sure what the options are at Dudley's age." Or whether the options I heard about in the future started this early. I'm sure I've seen references to colts games, but that's older kids, I think. "He's _far_ too young for boxing, of course, but _something_ to help the boys' fitness along would be good on general principles alone."

"I suppose. And you'll still be, what, just floating around once Vernon's back awake?"

"That's one option. The one I'm _hoping_ for is figuring out some method of making myself a body of my own. I know it's _possible_ but the only method I know about is pretty horrible and I'm pretty sure impossible for me anyway. One of the sacrifices in the ritual is the bone of one's father and unless something unfortunate has happened the old boy's still using all of them." I've no idea who'd count for an enemy and I don't have any servants. Nor would I want one who thought self-mutilation was a reasonable management instruction. "I'm banking on me being cleverer than the chap who did that one to come up with some way of, I don't know, _growing_ a body with no consciousness in it that I can inhabit."

I have a bit of a moment with that thought: I'd been thinking all wizard-like about conjuring some sort of construct like the one Tom made in the graveyard, and forgetting how much broader and deeper a reference pool I have compared to him. Growing clones for transplant purposes - to the extent of putting an old brain into a young body - isn't quite a stock trope in science fiction, but I can think of a couple of works that feature it without trying terribly hard. Turns up in a couple of RPGs too. Bears thinking about. _Has_ anyone figured out spells for working with DNA? Note to self, et cetera.

"I suppose you're going to have to change more wizard money too?"

"I see your point with that, actually," I say, having covered a pause to think with a mouthful of cereal. "The stuff I've got to try and figure out the spells on the house is for your benefit as much as Harry's, so it's not unfair that it's a household expense. A new body is just for me, though. Have to figure out where to get more cash from."

Petunia doesn't pass any further comment, and we get on with our days. She's set the day aside for gardening, and since the forecast was crappy I decided to take the boys to the Natural History and Science museums, because you can't really go wrong with a day of dinosaurs and steam engines.

-oOo-

We return to routine for a couple more months. Harry gets settled in at school and Petunia feigns relief among the gossips at the school gate that her 'problem child' nephew is finally showing improvement - slyly taking credit, the cheeky cow - and Dudley is making a lot more progress. Finding them a rugby, soccer or cricket club that'll take them under 7 turns out to be a bust. There's a couple of footballs among the stuff Dudley has been bought and never touched, so I take the boys down to the rec and teach them to play three-and-in and some basic ball drills. _That_ turns into me refereeing a four-a-side game when some other kids join in, with a couple of other dads as completely unnecessary linesmen. It being autumn, we go home filthy and all three of us get a proper bollocking off Petunia. Worth it. (Besides, I think she doesn't actually mind all _that_ much, Dudley's absolutely full of how much fun he's had.) Sunday morning footy on the park turns into a regular thing, and I end up making the acquaintance of a few of the local dads. And, because the Fast Show won't be out for ten years or so, my Ron Manager routine - 'jumpers for goalposts' - establishes me as the neighbourhood comedy genius. (And prophet, once the telly catches up with my plagiarism.) There's a junior cricket set among the store of untouched toys, too, but that's going to have to wait until summer comes around again.

The Dietitian gives Vernon's carcass a thorough working over with the usual panoply of medical tools, frowns over blood test results and furnishes me with a diet plan that looks eminently achievable, especially when she assures me that apart from salt, herbs and spices Don't Count. Exercise should be, apparently, light and low-impact for at least the next six months at which point I have another appointment. The walks get brisker, the hikes I take the boys on get longer (though no more challenging, the North Downs aren't what you'd call spectacular, I had worse on my walk to school of a morning) and the boys discover that being used as weights for lifting is _entirely hilarious_. Every day moving around as Vernon gets to be less and less of a chore, and he starts being able to fit in clothes he hasn't worn in five years. The ten pounds a month rate of weight loss is going to taper off before too long, there's muscle building under the fat, but I reckon Vernon will be down to fifteen stone by Christmas.

Harry's legal paperwork proceeds nicely. Harry acts all Proper and Serious in the solicitor's office and it turns out that we don't have to wait for Lily's death certificate; the fact that he's been left with Vernon and Petunia and Lily isn't around is enough to get at least a conditional guardianship in place, with a formal residence order (that we don't have to physically attend court for) in the meantime. Death certificates for James and Lily will have to wait until the private inquiry agent - Legal Aid cover the disbursement, to my relief, the buggers are worse for bill-padding than lawyers - feels he can say on oath that they're nowhere to be found alive. The terminology is just different enough from the version I learned - I'm guessing there's a big procedural reform in the pipeline - to be mildly confusing, and I choke down the urge to start reading up. We're basically just waiting for a court date, likely to be some time in the new year, to go before a judge in chambers and confirm to him that this is what Harry wants and that he's happy where he is.

What little spare time I've got is devoted to hacking my way through Magic of Measurement and the rest of the books, getting all the knowledge I've stolen from Tom squared away. Conclusion: I've got two main problems.

The first one - and the biggest, because I can't solve it immediately - is that Tom's _knowledge_ came across, but his muscle memory and the magical equivalent (which definitely exists but which no two theorists give the same name to, the contrary bastards) very much _didn't_. What this means is that although I've all the knowledge I need for those spells, actually casting them is going to require practise, and a lot of it. And, when I get past the basics, someone to spot me who can reverse the inevitable fuckups. I'm not going to get far with an unreliable _lumos_ and all the variations on matchstick-to-needle I can do, so at some point I'm going to need a tutor and the 'foreigner new to wand-work' ploy is going to get another run out. The other embuggerance about this is that an ability to do even _intermediate_ wand-work would cut the second problem right down to size.

Said second problem is that without better wand skills than I've got, the tools for surveying the spells on the house are going to cost. The surveying instruments are simple enough - they're things Vitruvius would recognise, apart from the sextant - and most of the lenses, prisms, lanterns and so forth that are needed as secondary equipment are easily enough bought from catalogue suppliers. Very few of the items are too terribly expensive, but they _will_ add up. Add on the tools needed to write runic spells on them to enchant them (paint will do for temporary work, but the right paint is lead-based and hard to get hold of so I'm going to have to make my own if Diagon Alley doesn't sell it) and a whole shopping list of magical materials, magical glass, and surveying stakes in various exotic materials. It's going to add up _fast_.

I've been making cheap cracks about Vernon's golf club fund but it would take quite a dent even if I go at it as frugally as possible. And, in all fairness, that fund ought to be spent on the boys before anything else. I'm out on one of my neighbourhood float-arounds, chatting with the church-grim (Good boy!) by way of break from reading when I figure it out.

"The thing is, Skriker," for so I have named him, after the Black Dog legend of my own hometown, "get-rich-quick schemes never work, and even if my wizardry was up to clever schemes like using repair charms on written-off cars, it's the sort of thing that only works if you make a business of it. Which I don't have time for because I have to keep Vernon in his job."

Skriker nuzzles up close, and then darts off to sample a smell among the gravestones, sticking his nose in an overgrown bit that the sexton has missed with the mower. Supernatural guardian of the churchyard he may be, but he's still fundamentally a _dog_.

"Treasure-hunting might do the trick," I say, taking his meaning, "but again it's a time-intensive business even with magic. I'd need to have started years ago to have the money now, and I don't think I can repeat the time-travel trick."

We pace on a bit, reading off the gravestones and generally ambling about when it hits me. "Hang on, what if _Tom_ has a stash or two hidden away? All the stuff he needed for his resurrection had to come from _somewhere_ and it'd make sense to include some cash among that. Plus, if I rob it all, it's denying the enemy resources. Well _done _Skriker. Right, I'm off to find a quiet spot to go eat some more Tom. You be a Good Boy and guard this graveyard while I'm gone." Skriker _boofs_ an acknowledgement and escorts me to the lych-gate.

Tom grumbles in the background, but he's disjointed and incoherent now. I've taken less than a third of his life away from him, roughly speaking, but they were all formative, learning experiences. They're the connective tissue in his mental makeup, and with them gone the disjointed bits don't make a functioning personality. Haunting one of the unoccupied houses, I get to work on memories of hiding away resources.

_Yuck_.

Turns out Tom has a password-locked vault at Gringotts that has a parseltongue password to stymie anyone who figures out the password for the cart ride down. I'm going to need to take the boys to the zoo and test out _that_ particular skill in the reptile house: the chances of finding a snake in the wild at this time of year are nonexistent, they're all hibernating. On top of that, Mr. I-Hate-Muggles, the dirty great hypocrite, has a numbered swiss account, safe deposit boxes in several banks around England, and a surprisingly diverse portfolio of investments: stocks and shares, bonds issued by half a dozen governments, and rental property across much of the north of England. And, amusingly, title to the Glebe House at Little Hangleton, which he inherited in the normal course of events. Because, to a wizard able to control people on the scale he was capable of, getting three muggles to rewrite their wills to leave everything to an illegitimate child was trivially easy. Using his possessed uncle and a little memory-editing to cover his tracks, he had their entire estate and all its rents and investment income by way of trophy from his kills.

He's hardly touched the money, either: his career as an insurrectionist was mostly financed by the idiots he recruited so the income, which was nearly fifteen grand a year in 1945 and has kept pace with inflation, has just been piling up ever since. As soon as I can sort out a suitable magical disguise - polyjuice? - I'm visiting the law firm that manages the estate for him and indulging in a bit of mind control of my own to nick the fucking _lot_.

The stuff I can take using just the appropriate pass-codes and numbers I can get immediately, of course, if you've got telekinesis you don't need keys for safe-deposit boxes. The reason I want to clean him out _completely _\- beyond the obvious, denying him resources and also making him angry enough to be even stupider than normal - is that to get all the knowledge of his caches I _also_ had to get the knowledge of building that sea-cave that Regulus Black robbed. Some of those Inferi died as sacrifices to power the spells on the place, and they did _not_ die easy or clean.

As I say, _Yuck_. I want _revenge _for having to experience that.

-oOo-

There's no sense rushing anything, I feel. Nothing else, I need to forge a legal identity of my own that can be owner of all the stuff and bank accounts. Day trips to Manchester, Leeds, and - of all places - Crewe uses up some of Vernon's holiday entitlement and lets me visit - read 'clean out altogether' - five of Tom's safety deposit boxes. A little bit of aggressive legilimency - which isn't the Jedi Mind Trick _even though it totally is I'm not giggling you're giggling -_ and some low-effort poltergeisting on the box locks (no need to actually master the unlocking charm if you know how locks actually work and can work them from the inside) net me over forty grand in crisp twenties - from the looks Tom exchanged for these right around decimalisation - and a burdensome amount of krugerrands and Maria Theresa thalers. Some work with a calculator and the FT suggests there's over two hundred grand's worth of bullion in the three strongboxes I've looted. The most recent date on the gold coins suggests he stopped collecting them around 1960, so he's had that much money effectively stuffed in his mattress for _twenty five years_. The _idiot_. Although not _that_ much of an idiot, at least he's not using Galleons and Sickles as a store of wealth.

It probably isn't even stolen, either. The great and powerful Voldemort doesn't stoop to thieving from muggles, not when he's got investment income that pays year-on-year from a single act of murder. With, I suspect, some follow-up killings as various relations of the Riddles tried to contest the will that left everything to the bastard son. Not that I'm going digging in Tom's memories to know for sure, I've seen a few episodes of what Tom considers to be the correct style for robbery in other memories. Classy gentleman thief he is _not_. Mostly that was for magical artefacts and rare books, though. Which are in a hidden vault under the Riddles' old house along with the keys to several other deposit boxes which I'm going to have to do some foreign travel to get my hands on. Raiding the house at Little Hangleton, meanwhile, is going to have to wait until I've got somewhere to store the collection of dangerous cursed stuff.

Or until I've mastered fiendfyre to dispose of it permanently.

It is, however, enough to be going on with. Quirrell isn't going to go to Albania until late '90, possibly early '91. I've got six years in which to track everything down, steal it all, and liquidate it for investment. I'm thinking offshore trust corporation in Panama before all the cool kids start doing it. I make a note to find out just what the exchange rate in purchasing power is between the normal and magical worlds might be. Harry's got a war ahead of him, and wars cost money.

-oOo-

All of this cunning planning - and purchase of cunning instruments, which I fit in where and when I can, mostly by mail order but with a couple of visits to Diagon Alley thrown in - gets interrupted in the last week of November by a frantic call from Petunia: the school has called and the boys are in the Headmistress's office for fighting. Reassuring her that it can't be _that_ serious, they're only five after all, I call the school and tell them I'll be there shortly.

St. Gregory's Church of England Primary School: this is the first time I've been, although Vernon has memories of last year's parents evening, and it's the same identikit mid-60s school architecture as the primary I attended. Thrown up in a hurry to accommodate the children of baby-boomers, most of the interior is painted breeze-block under the sugar-paper and childrens' art. Apparently Top Infants - the National Curriculum with its numbered years is a few years away yet - are doing Weather at the moment and there are clouds, rainbows and smiling suns all over the entrance hall.

Also in said hall is a bench outside the headmistress's office, on which there are five boys including Harry and Dudley, all of them looking at least a bit rumpled and one rat-faced little article appears to have had a nosebleed. They've all been crying. Of course they have, they've been fighting and now it's time to pay the piper. It takes a little effort to keep the smile off my face, I remember how apocalyptic being sent to the Head's office seemed at that age.

"Harry," I say, taking a knee in front of the two I'm responsible for, "you're better with words. Calmly and sensibly, please, what happened? _Obviously_ you're both getting a talking-to, but I want to know what I'm going to be talking to you about."

Hesitantly at first, but with much nodding and yeah-ing from Dudley, Harry - with digressions and diversions, because Five Years Old - gives me the story. While they were playing Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, St. Gregory's having quite the fan community for that show, they came upon Piers Polkiss calling Katie McFarlane names. Harry wasn't front and centre for telling him to stop or they'd go and get a teacher, but he was definitely backing up Dennis Holroyd, (Aramis in their game, it is apparently important I know this, he's one of the other boys on the bench) as he did his level best to live up to the Muskehound ideal. Apparently Katie is Dennis's next-door neighbour and they walk to school together and she's All Right, For a Girl.

So far, so good, even up to the point where Dennis and Piers started shoving each other. Any member of staff at this point could have defused the whole thing by making everyone stand by the wall or similar. Clearly they _didn't_, distracted or just not looking the right way, and Harry tried to get between Piers and Dennis. This ends with Harry on the floor, not hurt other than his dignity, and Dudley (who I entirely agree is a _very_ convincing Porthos, well done Dudley) took _that_ precise moment to decide he was part of a family, and thump Piers in the face, and Katie arrived back with a teacher, who sent everyone to the Head's office.

"Well," I say, "does everyone agree that that's how it happened? _Tell the truth now."_ I lace the last few words with a bit of magic to make the command stick. Apart from maybe Harry they're all going to be unusually honest for the next little while. I get a chorus of nods. "Wait here."

The School Secretary's thoughts tell me that the Head is already seeing Piers' dad, who is apparently Detective Constable Polkiss, Surrey Constabulary, and I mentally gird myself up for dealing with the overprotective dad of a copper's brat. Not all coppers' kids are like that, obviously, but enough are that they're a stereotype all of their own. They usually have parents who think the warrant card makes them King Shit and entitled to throw their weight around. I have fond memories of receiving a formal written apology from Lancashire Constabulary on account of knowing just how to word a letter to their Professional Standards Department; HM Constabulary take their reputation as one of the least worst police forces in the world quite seriously, and little-tin-hitler behaviour doesn't fly so well if they find out about it.

"I'm sorry, you can't go in, Mrs. Mellor is in a meeting -"

"That's quite all right. _She'll want to see me right away."_

"Of course, she'll want to see you right away," and yes, it's _totally_ the Jedi Mind Trick. I'm going to have to watch that, I have a loophole in my standards of personal behaviour the exact shape of the words 'because it was funny.'

Inside the Head's office DC Polkiss is living down to my worst expectations, being the _exact sort_ of officer that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was passed to hamstring. He's on his feet, fists planted wide apart on Mrs. Mellor's desk, and leaning over to give her the benefit of his Majestic Authority.

Mrs. Mellor, for her part, is facing him down with every evidence of steel in her spine. She's due to retire any day now, and has probably dealt with Polkiss's like before. Trouble is, you back a salty old lady like that into a corner, you've primed her to overreact: she spent her childhood getting evacuated or bombed, which left her hard as flint and just as likely to cut you if pressured. A look into her memories of the last ten minutes tells me that he's bluffing that he can have Dudley arrested for assault if he's not at least suspended. Spoiler: he can't, and if he tries I know how to use it to flush his career even in these wild-and-woolly pre-PACE days.

"_Sit. Down._" I surprise both of them with my entrance. And DC Polkiss in particular when he finds himself thudding into his chair with the sheer force of the psychic wallop I just gave him. The fact that I'm finally building some physical presence on to Vernon's frame doesn't hurt the impression I'm making, either. "I could hear you clear down the corridor while I was asking the boys what happened. And for your general fund of information, all of them are under eight and as such legally incapable of offending."

"My son's nose is -"

"Pssh." I don't need any magic for that, he's so unused to being talked over that he shuts up out of shock. "He's got a nosebleed, some bruising, and he's had a shock. He's also learned an important life lesson, which is that the other kids don't like bullies."

"But -"

"Don't get defensive about it you arse, all kids act up at one time or another. Find out if it's because he's upset about something and fix it. I shouldn't have to tell you this, you're supposed to be his dad. Try and remember that, rather than waving your warrant card about."

He goes all gimlet-eyed at me. With the long pointy nose and gelled-back hair the rat comparison becomes as obvious on him as it is on his son.

"Don't look at me like that," I tell him, "I'll be having a word with Dudley about measuring his responses better in future." I turn to Mrs. Mellor. "I stopped to have a word with the boys on the way in, and as far as I can tell it's just Piers and Dudley who've overstepped, and Harry seems to be more sinned against than sinning. I don't know if you're going to be talking to parents of the other two, but it seems to me that the lesson they need is about staying calm and using their words, nothing more serious than that. I assume that you've already handed out school discipline?"

"I showed them the school strap and let them hear it whack on my desk. They all know it's an option now, don't tell them I've never actually _used_ the wretched thing. That should help drive home the lesson I presume you'll be imparting, Mr. Dursley. It also makes them feel that spending morning break tomorrow writing lines is getting off lightly." There's a little bit of a smile in the Headmistress's eyes. Having a Supportive Parent barge in while she was trying to defuse an Unexploded Idiot must have been quite the relief.

DC Polkiss, who is now _thoroughly_ confused, says "But what about -"

It's all I can do not to roll my eyes. "Piers knocked over a little boy who my Dudley apparently feels quite protective about. Because Dudley knows Harry lost his parents and has nowhere else to go, and they've spent the summer becoming friends. Piers acting up is your problem to deal with, but I suggest you start with making him understand that there _are_ people who _will _object to bullying by thumping the bully, and him whining to his dad afterward won't make a punch in the face hurt any less. Which isn't important. He's acting up because he's unhappy about something, or because you've missed a bit when teaching him how to behave. Talk to your kid, figure out the problem, and fix it. If we all do that, we can spend less time having entirely tedious conversations like this."

He sort of deflates in his chair. "I suppose you have a point."

Mrs. Mellor and I exchange a look that speaks _volumes._

He goes on, "you say little Harry lost his parents?"

I nod. "It's how he came to live with us. We were a bit worried at first that he was going to be a troubled child as a result. The cover story is that my sister-in-law and her husband died in a road traffic accident. All _I'm_ cleared to know is that it _is_ a cover story, and I probably shouldn't be saying even that much. Harry seems to have turned a corner over the summer and touch wood, he'll be all right going forward. But, as I say, Dudley's taken it into his head to get protective of him."

Silence. Both of the other adults in the room have raised eyebrows. I'd been looking for a way to change the narrative about Harry from the poisonous gossip Petunia had been spreading. (If anyone asks, she's either been getting over-enthusiastic with the cover story, story or we blame the tendency of _other_ gossips to exaggerate.) Polkiss being a copper will help: he'll go looking for the Potters' death and find absolutely nothing, which will be more telling than even the most elaborate cover story. Better yet, he'll find a reference to the explosion in Godric's Hollow that the Obliviators missed. One or another of these two will talk to someone, and by the time it's finished Harry will be James Bond's orphaned kid.

Polkiss takes his leave and his son, and the secretary informs Mrs. Mellor that the other two parents have arrived.

"Mr Dursley," the Headteacher says as I'm about to leave, "You mentioned being 'cleared' - is there anything I should know? I _do _have to consider the safety of the school."

"Other than neither confirming nor denying that I wasn't always an overweight industrial equipment salesman, no. My security clearance was in relation to a desk job, nothing terribly exciting." I smile and shrug to emphasise the no-big-deal nature of the thing. Amusingly, this is actually sort-of true: HM Government has very few in-house lawyers relative to the amount of legal work they've got, and some of the matters they need outside lawyers for come under the Official Secrets Act. Mrs. Mellor doesn't need to know that my 'clearance' was for one case that amounted to me doing a few hours' paperwork. For the Department for Education, just to drive home how not-James-Bond the whole thing was. Since she _might _have been asking about Harry's situation, I go on, "Anyway, as long as we don't make a to-do about Harry's presence here there won't be any trouble. Keeping him out of newspaper stories under his right name should do the trick, I think. He can be Harry Dursley to any reporter that asks."

She nods. "One last thing: the PTA are organising a Santa Claus visit for the school's carol concert and nativity play this year, and they're looking for a new Father Christmas as the old one has moved away. Can I put your name forward?"

"Oooh, that's stereotyping, that is," I say, slapping Vernon's much-diminished but still remarkably large belly with a laugh. I never had the right build to do the Santa thing in my previous life, and it always looked like a lot of fun. "Of course I'll do it. Send a note home with Harry of the date and times you want me, and whether they've got a costume or if I should sort that out myself. I'll practise my Ho Ho Ho in the meantime."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

I'm going to straight up admit that the difficulty with reading while disembodied is in the story purely to impose a limit. I am a _voracious _reader and if I was given the ability to absorb information with absolute tirelessness around the clock? This story would rapidly turn into one of those sudden-power-up fix-it fics that are a guilty pleasure of mine. (A guilty enough pleasure that I wouldn't care to perpetrate one of my own; I'm skirting close to it as it is.)

Reggie Perrin was the central character in the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, a sitcom from the 70s. The title sequence shows him stripping naked and walking into the sea, a method of real or faked suicide that became known as 'doing a Reggie Perrin' for quite some time after.

Rugby: I've played exactly _one_ game of Rugby Union in my life and never played League at all. I only really learned the sport when my son got into it. Props and locks are the big blokes who do the heavy lifting in the scrum.

Crufts: _The_ dog show in Britain. Been going since the back end of the 19th Century, it's been the byword for top-flight competitive dog breeding and training for as long as I can remember.

The Third Servile War is the one Spartacus is famous for leading. Ancient Rome did in fact tattoo slaves and criminals as a punishment (it's why the latin for 'tattoo', _stigma,_ has the meaning it does in modern English). The rebellion kicked off - in magical history, the real-world cause of the revolt is obscure - when they proposed tattooing _all_ slaves, not just the misbehaving ones.

The Fast Show - on which Ron Manager, the perennially confused old football pundit is one of the best regular turns - is well worth looking up, because even after all these years _it's still funny_. If you look them up on Youtube you'll also get to see a young Arthur Weasley moonlighting from his Ministry job. (They should _totally_ have had Arthur Weasley say "You haven't seen me, right?" in the movies.) The other Potterverse actors who appeared in the Fast Show being, of course, Warwick Davis and Johnny Depp. No, really. He dropped a few crafty Fast Show quotes into the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Big fan, y'see.

Rune-painting was a thing in the cultures that used them. Even the carved runes were filled in, usually with red and white lead paint. Which had been getting rarer and rarer in Britain since the 60s.

Having ideas while talking to the dog? I do this a _lot_. Quite a few of the ideas that go into my writing emerge from long sessions of chat with my dog, including several in this story. Not the one that emerges from my chat with the grim in this chapter, despite the deep narrative _rightness _it would have been if that happened.

Corporal punishment in state schools was banned in '86: up until that date every primary school had an implement like a strap or tawse with which to hit children, usually on the palm of the hand. Fee-paying schools maintained the barbaric practise until, IIRC, the late 90s. The headteacher at my primary school in the '70s used to use only the threat as I've depicted here. Still wrong, but a step in the right direction.

Fanfic recommendation: All According To Plan on FFN by Lysandra Leigh, and on AO3, which has better support for co-authors than making them set up a joint account, by PseudoLeigha and inwardtransience. It's a very good example of outsider-coming-to-the-wizarding-world, along with being an excellent read.


	10. is seldom wasted

DISCLAIMER: Is the Wizarding world a jarring collage of delightful whimsy and sickening dystopia with absolutely no rhyme nor reason as to which crops up where? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 10

_She nods. "One last thing: the PTA are organising a Santa Claus visit for the school's carol concert this year, and they're looking for a new Father Christmas as the old one has moved away. Can I put your name forward?"_

"_Oooh, that's stereotyping, that is," I say, slapping Vernon's belly and smiling. I never had the right build to do the santa thing in my previous life, and it always looked like a lot of fun. "Of course I'll do it. Send a note home with Harry of the date and times you want me, and whether they've got a costume or if I should sort that out myself. I'll practise my Ho Ho Ho in the meantime."_

-oOo-

"You've agreed to do _what?_" Petunia looks like she can't tell whether to sniff in disapproval or burst out laughing.

"Santa Claus. And since I've got a load of Riddle's cash, I reckon I can do a proper job of it. Goodie-bag for every kid, sort of thing." Hopefully I can have a photographer on hand to capture the look on Tom's face when he finds out where his money went.

"What possessed you - no, bad choice of words. Why did you - I mean, that's a lot of work, presents for what, two hundred and something children?"

"Not _that_ much work, the trick is delegating most of it. I'm sure you can find a couple of teenagers who need a bit of pocket money for filling goodie bags? Getting things to put in them is an afternoon with the Yellow Pages. Sweeties, a novelty of some sort. Might be worth seeing if I can get a bulk deal on small lego sets." The days when it was an hour or two with the internet are a ways off yet, more's the pity. "If you can do a bit of needlework to get a costume run up, doesn't have to be fancy, I'll find a beard and a great big sack. Fancy being an Elf for the day?"

That's the point where she decides on laughing. "Oh, no, you volunteered to make a spectacle of yourself, don't drag me into it. Besides, you've already got me recruiting your present-wrappers, I'll tell them it comes with elf-duty into the bargain. How does Vernon feel about you making a show of him?"

"Vernon's actually pretty happy with it." I've been keeping up Vernon's talk sessions, and while I'm no expert he's actually making some good progress figuring out who he really wants to be and how to get there from what he was made to be by his upbringing. I do wonder whether he's going to book some time with an actually _qualified _therapist when I'm done with him. "He's going to get a reputation as a good sport and generous with it, for the low, low price of an afternoon having fun playing dress-up. I imagine if you start early enough you could get a few people together to share the cost of doing it next year. Vernon'll probably want to do some kind of Santa's grotto thing rather than addressing the whole school hall the way I mean to. It's the kind of good reputation and respectability that you _really_ want. Generosity and warm-heartedness and willingness to muck in, people _like_ that sort of thing."

It all goes as I hoped it would, and it turns out you _can_ use the whole aura thing that goes with legilimency to project the idea of really _believing_ in Father Christmas. Petunia found a couple of St. Gregory's alumnas who were willing to take the afternoon off from Stonewall to pass out sweeties and presents - small lego sets, I got a good deal off a toy wholesaler in Burnley - while I had enormous fun going full Pantomime at the front of the hall. I'm not sure whose reaction I enjoyed more, the infant classes down at the front or the adults cracking up at the back. Even Harry and Dudley, who are technically in on the gag, look like they feel as though they're in the presence of Saint Nick himself.

Then it's the turn of the top infants class to do the nativity play, all in best tea-towel-on-head style, and every class gets a turn at singing a couple of carols on stage. With my own kids all grown up, I'd not realised how much I missed this sort of thing. With the boys in top infants next year, they'll quite likely have a nativity play of their own. Memo: look into where camcorders have got up to by autumn of '86. Showing the girlfriends of 20-odd-year olds video of their boyfriend's first appearance on stage is one of the great overlooked pleasures of parenthood.

-oOo-

It's the night after the PTA shindig that I get started on the spell survey. It's the winter solstice, inauspicious for a great many magics and the strongest day of the year for a number of particularly nasty ones, but it has in common with the summer solstice that the calculations - and oh, boy, does Arithmancy make me wish I'd taken Statistics instead of Pure Mathematics at A-Level, thank _goodness_ for the existence of revision guides, the first and only resort of the desperate crammer - get a great deal easier, much as measuring water levels at the top and bottom of the tides is easier.

I'd used up two of Vernon's days off instead of just the one I'd needed to perform at St. Gregorys, to give me time to get everything set up right in advance. Vernon had had a backlog of holiday time because he didn't dare be away from supervising the expenses scam he was running. Since I've dismantled the whole thing and concealed it all as best as my rudimentary forensic accounting skills will allow, I've a lot more leeway.

I spent a thoroughly miserable eight hours - it may be the warmest December for ten years or so, but it's rainy even by _my_ standards, and I'm from fucking _Lancashire_ \- measuring and sighting to get survey pins and stakes in their proper places and the little mirrors and lenses on the top of them aligned just so. At some point I am going to _seriously_ look into using lasers for this kind of deal, but they're not cracker-novelty cheap yet, nor even in the price range of the home gamer. The apparatus I've built includes several slit lanterns and lamps with lens arrangements to produce beams of light, and I suspect there's room for cheap-laser improvement _there_, too. Fortunately, Vernon and Petunia are early adopters of the tacky outdoor christmas lighting fashion, so the additions to the grounds of Number 4 are thereby camouflaged amid fairy lights and animated illuminated reindeer.

I get to spend the day of the solstice itself in the warm and dry assembling the operator end of the whole thing. The recording instruments are all set up on the dining table, on which I've laid an eight-by-four sheet of inch-thick marine-grade plywood so I can screw things in place. Painting the runes gives me a crash course in Old Norse, a _brutal_ refresher in Old English, and a brush-up on the technical drawing they made me learn at secondary school, and then it's string-and-pin geometry and carefully drilled pilot holes to get everything in the right relation to everything else. Fortunately Petunia hadn't inflicted her horrible taste in wallpaper on the dining room, so there's a clean painted wall to use as a projection screen.

Despite herself, Petunia is curious, and brings cocoa to me while I'm working on the final setup. The boys are asleep, having been told I'm busy all day with 'boring grown-up stuff, let's go to the zoo tomorrow'. Chessington Zoo has a christmas event on, so they're excited about two Santa visits in one Christmas.

"It looks more Mad Scientist than Wizard," she observes.

She's not wrong: there's a lot of brass and wire and bits of blown glass and prisms and lenses on the table, not least because the influx of cash from Tom let me spring for the deluxe models of most of it. "It _does_ have a Hammer House of Horror vibe to it, yes," I agree, "but it's all magical in one way or another."

"That's the red writing, yes?"

"Yep. Most of it's in runes, which is the alphabet we used in this country before the church made us all switch over to the Roman alphabet in the tenth century. Basically any writing can work magic, the Egyptians were buggers for it with their hieroglyphs, if you've got enough _meaning_ all together in one place for it to count. Which is why the proprietor of the magical bookshop has a hard time finding where he's shelved the books about invisibility, for example, and the leading textbook on magical monsters tends to bite. This is where runes and hieroglyphs and writing systems where the characters themselves have their own meaning come in. You can pack a lot more meaning into a single word than you can if you just spell it in roman script. On top of that, you can use synonyms and poetical figures and so forth to get the meaning you want where you want it. Even concrete poetry for some effects, much though I loathe it as an art-form. A runic inscription packs a _lot_ of meaning into a small space, so it's easy to make it magical."

"Why doesn't that happen with, you know, _normal_ books?"

That actually amuses me; I've noticed the same assumption coming from wizards, that magic stops at the borders of the wizarding world. "What makes you think it doesn't? Never felt transported away by a good story? Felt the reality of the triumphs and tragedies of the characters? _That_ is magic. Small magic, everyday magic that you don't notice because it's so pervasive. It's also no coincidence that roman and greek script, with letters that only meant sounds, got to be popular. It's a lot harder to make a strongly magical text by accident with those, and standardised spelling and a rejection of fanciful language for factual writing also damps the effect. The wizards and witches are a bit snobby about what actually _counts_ as magic, but coming at it without their cultural blinders on? Magic is _everywhere_ and everyone is at least a little bit magical. Vernon more than, well, a common house-brick. Dudley, if I'm any judge, not much more than Vernon. You more than Dudley, Harry more than any of you. It's not three sets of wizards, squibs and muggles, it's a continuum, a spectrum if you will."

I finish up the last of the settings as I say this and open the shutter on the big lantern that shines into the main prism. Which projects, yes, a spectrum on the dining room wall. I take my cocoa from Petunia - still no rat poison, Petunia is a _lot_ more comfortable with my presence now even as she looks forward to the day she gets unaugmented Vernon back - and say, "and now, we wait. It takes time for the apparatus to capture everything." It'd be quicker if I trusted my wand-work, of course, but you can't have everything.

"What happens now?"

"That spectrum will start to show absorption lines and various shapes and figures, it's very much like scientific spectroscopy in that regard. Between the lines and figures and measurements of their spacing - I've got a magical camera to get a record as well - I should be able to find our what all those spells do."

"There's more than one?"

"I've reason to believe so, yes. At least two, I personally pick this sort of thing up as musical sounds, and there's a bass and a treble clef to it and they don't sound related at all. At a guess, something Lily did and something Dumbledore did after. Do you recall her visiting here at all?"

"Just the once. The christmas while we were both pregnant, just before then. She came by to drop off a christmas present for Vernon and me."

I raise an eyebrow. I remember reading in the books about Petunia sending a christmas present to Lily - a vase that Harry broke with his toy broom - but nothing about what Lily had sent in return. Vernon has no memory of this at all.

"The print of _Monarch of the Glen_ in the hall. She always knew I liked that picture. I never told Vernon it was from Lily and her husband, he was still angry because he thought James had been sending him up the first time they met."

I don't say anything. I like to think I've been setting a good enough example that Petunia can figure out her behaviour over that was atrocious. Her expression suggests she's at least some of the way to that conclusion, at any rate. I also resolve to take a closer look at that picture, which I must have walked past a thousand times since I first arrived. If there's magic on it, it's subtle enough that I've not noticed it. It's far more likely that it's exactly what it seems to be, but not checking would be overlooking the obvious.

The spectrum on the wall is starting to look, well, _dirty_ for want of a better word. There are marks starting to appear, and lots of them. This looks promising. "Is that all you have to remember Lily by?" I ask, to break the awkward silence.

"Just that, and the baby blanket that Harry was wrapped in when we got him. I've got it in a box with some mothballs at the back of the wardrobe. It's got some of that magic writing embroidered on it, I think."

_Definitely want a look at that,_ I think. Aloud, I say, "Something for Harry to have when he's a little older, that, I should say. You'd think that when Dumbledore brought the little fella here he might've fetched a few of his toys and so forth. They can't _all_ have been magical."

Petunia sniffs in best annoyed-housewife mode. "I'm glad you've no high opinion of that lot either. It's like the magic rots their brains. I thought Lily had gone doolally with it, until I met some of the others. Touched in the head, all of them."

I shrug. "When you live a different way, it's easy to think a different way. I don't imagine it's impossible to keep some common sense about you with a wand in your hand, but having seen them in their natural habitat, as it were, I rather think most of them don't see the need. They're insulated from the consequences of their own absurdity, for the most part."

"What makes them so foolish in the first place?"

"Not a clue, I'm sorry to say. You'd expect some cultural divergence, they cut themselves off from the rest of us at the end of the seventeenth century and in some ways they've sort of _stalled_ there. That I'd expect. They're long-lived, so cultural conservatism seems quite natural. It's all the absurdity that they just accept as normal I don't get. Having a bit of whimsy in their purely magical spaces I could get, embracing the absurd to maintain a clear distinction between magical and mundane life, that's entirely understandable. It's submerging themselves in the ridiculous and never coming up for air that I don't understand. It's like refusing to leave the nursery when you're all grown up."

"You think that might be it? They've made themselves a never-never land and refuse to grow up? Like Peter Pan?"

"It's a plausible hypothesis, I'll give you that. I'd need a team of top-flight sociologists and cultural anthropologists and the funding for a decade-long study to know what's _really_ going on, of course. And I don't even know if this is magicals the world over or just here in Britain."

As I watch the image on the wall develop, I'm starting to think that I've managed, quite against expectation, to get all of the surveying instruments correctly set up first time. I mean, I _did_ draw up checklists and crib sheets and went around everything re-measuring and ticking it all off on a clipboard before I lit the lanterns, so it's not impossible. I turn the room light off and start working the wizarding camera to get shots of the spectrum as it develops. I've got blu-tack and a box of tailors' measuring tapes with which to start the process of recording everything. For thirty long, silent minutes, though, Petunia and I just watch the image on the wall come into sharper and sharper focus.

The image seems to have stabilised; I time another five minutes and watch closely for changes. There aren't any. This is the information we're getting tonight, with this equipment in this configuration.

There's one thing obvious right from the start. "Definitely two sets of spells," I say. "This group of lines _here_ and this group _here_. The lengths and angles denote function, although I've some work ahead of me to figure out what each set does. Might just be two _really_ complicated spells, but apparently almost nobody does that, it's like trying to play the whole orchestra by yourself; even if it was physically possible you'd just make a mess. You have to get a whole lot of wizards together, and it's the sort of thing you can't really hide in a place like Little Whinging."

I turn my attention to the big set of curves that denote magic-over-time, looking for the peaks - the illustration in the book showed them looking like EEG heartbeat traces - that denote spellcasting activity. Some work with tape measure, magnifying-glass and calculator puts the most recent big peak right around the end of October or beginning of November 1981. "When Harry arrived," Petunia observes, "so Dumbledore _did_ do something." I notice she's not pretending not to know who he is or how to say his name any more. She's as intrigued as I am: her troubles all started when she wasn't allowed to go to magic school and here she is working with magic in her own home.

"It's about the right time, certainly. Until I've figured it out precisely - there are astronomical effects that show up in this image that'll let me pin it down to within a day or two - we can't be sure that it wasn't something that occurred at the same time Lily died. That's a thing you can do, apparently: have magic begin or end at the moment of your death. And some spells just do that of their own accord." I'm thinking of the goldfish desk ornament Lily made for Slughorn: the spell ended at the moment of her death. There's nothing in the magical theory I've learned to say that a spell can't be made ready to _start_ when the caster dies, either.

"Oh, now _this_ is interesting," I say, pointing to another peak I've found. "Pass me another measuring tape."

"What's interesting about it? This line is time, right, so there's another spell before That Night?"

"That's exactly what it is," I say, blu-tacking the tape in place to get the length of line measured off right. "And it's at least a year and a half before that night, possibly as much as two years. Do you want to bet that we get a date for this one right around the time Lily visited?"

"It does seem likely, doesn't it? December of 1979."

I get the measurement - I'm pretty sure this _is_ something Lily did when she came to drop off the Landseer print - and grab a magnifying glass to look closer at the spell-trace. It's visibly different to the one we're tentatively calling Dumbledore's work, in as much as it doesn't look like a fully-formed spell. I trace the ripples in the spectrum that tie the casting trace to the spell-trace itself and observe that there's a whole fan of ripples from that back to the time curves. "Well, bugger," I observe.

"Language," Petunia says, absently. I'd left the relevant page of Magic of Measurement open and she's actually doing the time-trace calculation herself. It's not difficult, just laborious, and well within her O-Level maths.

"This other spell, the one we think Lily did, it has multiple casting dates," I tell her as I walk my fingers across the projection to follow the new traces. "Some of which are very, very old. Like Lily's spell woke something up that was already here. Do we know what was on this site before the houses went up?"

"Fields, as far as I know," Petunia says. "And the date matches up with Lily's visit. Mid December 1979." Of course, this is the British Isles, which have been quite densely inhabited since the last ice age. 'Fields' can cover a surprising amount of archaeology that goes unnoticed for centuries.

"Then we have an authentic mystery," I tell her. "And at least something to confirm that Dumbledore was at least mistaken when he said the protection on this house was powered by Lily's self-sacrifice. Whatever it is, she switched it on _before_ she died."

"What does it do?"

"That'll take a lot of work - some of this is like interpreting the _I Ching_ \- but I'm going to guess that Dumbledore wasn't completely bullshitting when he said it was a protective enchantment. He could probably have picked up that much just from his own personal expertise without all the gizmos we're using here, but it looks like he's missed the connection to much older magic."

"How much older?"

"It's all the way over _here_. And that table of conversion factors in the book, there, it looks decidedly logarithmic to me. Or logarithmic-ish, anyway, I'm remembering stuff from an A-Level I got a C in over thirty years ago. Non-linear at any rate. This is almost certainly centuries, could even be _millennia_." Hopefully Petunia doesn't notice that I just straight-up gave away the time-travel thing there. Unless A-levels have been going for more than thirty years at this point, in which case we're shiny.

"Well? Get the measurement," Petunia tells me, handing me blu-tack and measuring tape. She's actually working up an enthusiasm. "I'll go and make tea while you do the hard sums, you're the one with the A-levels, after all."

I get the result and do the calculations. There's actually a whole _range_ of dates, and rather than try and pick out all of the peaks - which are weird and smeary and _nothing_ like the diagrams in the book, indicating that this is not a kind of magic that the author of that section had ever encountered - I take a best guess at the start and end. Which gives me a start date in the ninth century and an end date in the early seventeenth. From Alfred the Great to James I, roughly speaking: I could be out by as much as a century either way at the start and by anything up to fifty years at the end, taking as pessimistic a view as I can of possible measurement errors.

Which is problematic, as those are two periods when this country changed a _lot_. James I's accession expanded the nation to include Scotland - it's when you get the first references to the United Kingdom - and fifty years later his son has been executed and the country is a parliamentary democracy, or at least the larval form of one. The differences a century either side of Alfred the Great are even bigger. Before Alfred: the seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons, more or less at peace after the viking raids subsided. After Alfred: England, united to drive out the Danish invasion. I can't recall _exactly_ when the Danelaw was fully reconquered - but I'm pretty sure it was done and dusted less than a hundred years after the midpoint of the date range I've got in front of me.

I'm sitting glaring at the calculations on the page when Petunia comes back in with tea. "What did you get?" she asks.

I hmm a bit while I sip my tea, trying to will the calculations to make some _actual_ _fucking sense. _"Well, whatever Lily did, and I honestly can't think of anyone else who might've been casting spells here on that date, it called on some _really_ old magic. Ninth century, possibly as early as the late eighth, with a slight option on early tenth century. For some reason I've got Alfred the Great in my head, which would be late Ninth Century, he died in 899. No idea why I'm thinking that, but he _was_ a big man for the scholarship, which would've included magic back then. It could just be that he's the only big figure from back then that I can readily call to mind."

"Well, _everyone_ remembers Alfred the Great and how he burnt the cakes."

"Quite, and there's a lot more to his story than one bakery accident, chap was _impressive_, but what we've got here is some sort of magic starting in his time that apparently Lily was still able to call on over a thousand years later. Along with all this other stuff that feeds in to it, which seems to have stopped in Stuart times, or thereabouts. Possibly as late as the Civil War. Which again, has to be something fairly impressive to still be working three or four centuries later."

"And no idea what it does?"

"We should be able to get a general sense right away, I'm pretty sure we've got diagrams showing some of the figures those lines form, which will give us the executive summary. Details will take longer, so I'm going to stay up late photographing everything." I pick up the relevant book and start flipping through the appendix full of diagrams.

The big, old spell that Lily had a hand in has two strong figures in it: protective magic, and blood magic. Which explains why it was that Dumbledore got it in his head that the magic he found already on Number Four had something to do with Lily's sacrifice: he'd probably already analysed the magic on Harry himself and assumed a connection. In all fairness, I'd made the same assumption: where Dumbledore and I differ is that I went and bought a load of kit and measured it properly. And ended up with more questions than I had when I started, because the rest of that magic is straight-up _baffling_. Whatever it is, it was forgotten by the time of Magic of Measurement.

Memo: when Harry's a bit older and more settled, I'm going to get him to sit still for a session with all of these gizmos and we can find out what the crack is with his protection. It's obviously a _known_ magic: even if there isn't anything about it in any of Tom's memories that I've eaten so far, he did claim to recognise it. Directly to me, and to Harry in the graveyard scene that, touch wood, we're going to be able to prevent. If the magic on Harry generates the same screwy result, we might conclude that there's something about what Lily did that generates funny results when measured like this.

Of more immediate interest, and rather harder to interpret, is the set of spells - and it's definitely more than one piece of magic cast on the same day - that we're labelling 'Dumbledore's Work'. Whatever he did, it involved dozens of spells across a whole range of magical categories: several protections, some that deal with information of some sort (anti-scrying protections?) And four, quite concerning, that appear to be some sort of mind-altering spells. They _could_ be designed to confound enemies, make them think this isn't the right place and forget they were ever here. Spells like that would make sense. They could also be means to link these magics to Dumbledore's own mind, so he knows if there's an attack: the category is broad enough to include that. I want to be sure about this, because one of the _other_ possibilities is that it's meant to subtly influence anyone residing here. Which is all _kinds_ of concerning if you've read the kind of fanfics where Dumbledore magically influenced the Dursleys to be extra cruel to Harry.

I get as much information as I can out of all of the magics - detailed measurements, photographs of the lines and figures, and close-up photographs of the lines and figures with measuring-tape blu-tacked in place. It's one in the morning before I can put out the lantern and put Vernon to bed, having used up nearly a dozen rolls of film and filled a ring-binder with notes I'm going to have to transcribe neat over the next few weeks. The job ahead of me would be _so much simpler_ if laptops had been invented yet. Right now, the definition of 'portable computing' is 'doesn't quite require two blokes to lift it.' I'm fairly sure that the first spreadsheet programs are available for microcomputers, but I'm willing to bet that to someone used to Excel or LibreOffice they're painfully primitive.

-oOo-

The next day Chessington Zoo - done up for Christmas, with a Santa's grotto and everything - is a hit with the boys. They're both too young to remember Johnny Morris, but they're entirely on board for me supplying the animals' dialogue in various accents. Harry is careful to note that the camels do not, in fact, have triangular bumholes. In response I challenge him to explain the pyramids, then, and he gets this just-you-wait expression on his face that tells me he's going to be hitting the books over that one.

It's very different to the version I took my own kids to in the early 2000s. For one thing, while they've got a few fairground rides and a light railway with a little steam engine and some obviously under-construction areas with info boards up about their plans, it's not a theme park yet, it's still a traditional zoo. And I mean _really_ traditional, they're not nearly as focussed on conservation efforts as zoos got to be by the time I died. Here in the mid 80s, they're mid changeover from 'attractions and exhibits' to 'conservation collection' so the whole experience is a bit disjointed to my 21st-century mind. It's still fun, though, because I get to recycle half-remembered jokes from Animal Magic.

The reptile house is kind of the reason we're here, though, and after spending much of the morning exploring the world of animal voice-over comedy, we go in to look at matters herpetological. I have Petunia - who I dragged along for precisely this reason - take Dudley on his own tour while Harry and I discover three important things. First, that I speak snake. I kind of expected it, but wanted to confirm the matter before trying to use it under field conditions. The second is that _so does Harry_. Either the thing in his scar wasn't providing the ability - he could have inherited it naturally from either side, after all, it's not like it's the kind of thing you'd brag about with Voldemort on the loose being all snakey at everyone - or having it dissolve inside his mind let him pick up some bits of Tom's abilities even while I was devouring the bugger. (I'm carefully not calling the Scar a Horcrux: while I haven't absorbed all of Tom's knowledge on the subject, whatever was in that scar wasn't done by anything even _derived_ from Herpo's method. I don't know enough to say whether it could have worked for Tom in the tying-him-to-this-plane sense, but it wasn't a Horcrux.)

I'm quite pleased that Harry has that: it means that he and I have our own private language, which is one of those things that you don't really need until you do, and then you _really_ need it. Where I'd go for information on what magics Parseltongue helps with or makes possible I have no idea, but I sort of remember that Paracelsus had it in this universe and he was a prolific writer, so he's sure to have recorded at least something. It remains to be seen whether my near-fluency in modern German is up to reading sixteenth century alchemists' German. The possibility that english translations of his works on magic will be honest ones if they're on sale in magical Britain is somewhat low, I suspect.

The third thing we learn is that Parseltongue is definitely a magical language: we don't seem to be hindered at all by the toughened glass between us and the snakes we're chatting with, so the communication isn't happening via sound-waves. Which snakes can't hear anyway. The serpents themselves are mostly calm, peaceful creatures who're just waiting for the next meal to happen by, as most snakes are wont to do. They really won't bother you unless you tread on them.

Except, that is, for the King Cobra, who is a cantankerous, foul-mouthed beast who would dearly like to bite everyone and everything and we can all fuck off as far as he's concerned. He's clearly a handful in the estimation of the zookeepers as well, as the placard next to his vivarium informs us they've named him Bronson. Presumably after the tough-guy actor: I don't think the armed robber of the same name is famous yet. I have to tell Harry that if _he_ ever talks to anyone like that, I will be very cross with him. Good manners are important. Bronson tells me to fucking stick my fucking good fucking manners up my fucking vent, which sends Harry to the floor laughing. Nearly does for me, too, if I'm honest.

Harry is quite pleased to have been able to talk to the snakes, and because I've been Johnny Morrising my way around the zoo all day, Dudley doesn't bat an eyelid over Harry's account of the conversations. I discreetly check with Petunia while the boys are having a chippy lunch: she never saw, nor heard about, Lily talking to snakes. Unfortunately, we can't do anything to eliminate the possibility that Harry was a parselmouth before he got a bit of Tom stuck in his head. Britain's native snakes are thin on the ground and extremely shy of human contact, so it'd be quite possible that there are a lot more parselmouths than anyone suspects, because they've never actually met a snake to discover a talent that they'd probably keep schtum about anyway.

-oOo-

Christmas comes and with it the chance to have some fun cooking. Petunia gets slightly befuddled over the whole 'take christmas morning off' thing while I sort out a roast turkey with all the trimmings: Petunia tends to be a bit jealous of the kitchen as her domain so I've kind of been missing it. Not that she's a bad cook or anything, but I've got twenty years more experience than she has, none of it cooking for a palate as unadventurous as Vernon's.

I also have precedent on my side: social inversion is a yuletide tradition going back to at least early medieval times, after all. The boys get to help - once their attention span for the piles of presents has expired - mixing and stuffing and watching timers and so on. Christmas is, of course, a cheat day for everyone so I overload the dining table and let Vernon make a perfect beast of himself. As far as I can tell he's coming around to the idea of eating smaller amounts of more enjoyable food, but a table properly laden with decent scran is still a small foretaste of heaven for him.

We finish in time for the Queen's speech - _bloody hell she looks young! - _and we're left with a couple of hours of daylight in which to start the boys off with learning to ride their new bicycles - stabilisers properly fitted, of course - and they're soon organising races with the neighbour kids. I'm a little weirded out by the lack of helmets in evidence - they're not a thing you can actually even _buy_ at this point, the only ones I could find were adult models.

It's Boxing Day when the real challenge comes: Marge. I've tried, in telephone conversations, to get her alongside the idea that Harry is accepted now, and we're not holding his parents against him. Marge, alas, hasn't the depth and warmth to be called a cunt. So, I've planned how I'm going to deal with her when she turns up and tries her usual bullying horseshit. The essence of it is that she is going to be told, beyond any possibility of doubt, that there is now a line in the sand. (The plans for if she _crosses_ the line may or may not involve a sock with a half-brick in it.)

She arrives and makes a huge fuss of Dudley, who squirms away as soon as he decently can. Meanwhile, Ripper - who isn't the overbred monstrosity I'd been expecting, just an obnoxious animal woefully mistrained - goes looking for trouble.

And finds me. Thing is, I _like_ dogs. Which is why it pains me to see an animal so mishandled. He's not overbred, but the breeding-for-conformation has still produced an animal with mild breathing difficulties that absolutely should _not_ still have his testicles. Add to that an owner that thinks an aggressive dog is _funny_ and we were always going to have a problem.

Ripper is, for all it's not his fault, not a particularly Good Boy.

He's acquired a target lock on Harry, who's not been allowed out of his cupboard during any of Ripper's previous visits, and decided that the runty kid needs showing his place. I could probably do this with just Dad Voice - it works on dogs, too - but there's a safety concern so I lace a bit of magic into it. "RIPPER! SIT!"

Ripper's arse is on the deck before he quite knows what's happening.

"Ripper! Lay down!" He looks like he's going to make an issue of it, so I add a bit of 'I am Big And Scary' when I repeat 'Lay Down!'

"Here now, why are you speaking that way to poor Ripper?" Marge's wattles are vibrating with the first gusts of a temper-tantrum. She's eating her emotions just like Vernon was, and her poison of choice is sweet sherry which makes the whole thing worse: if it wasn't for having to walk a kennel of dogs every day, she'd be in even worse shape than Vernon was when I found him.

"Making sure the dog knows his place, Marge. We've children in the house, he can't be getting ideas."

"I'll have you know - "

I cut her off with a gesture, which works more via surprise than anything. I'm going to keep my tone reasonable: if Marge flounces (which I kind of want, she's a bad influence on Vernon and not suitable to be around children absent getting her life in order in a major way) I want it quite clear to any onlookers that it's her own fault. "I'll not have it, Margie. If he's allowed to show aggression, it's only a matter of time before he bites and I'd stand for nothing short of him being put down if that happens. I don't mind - RIPPER! DOWN!" Like a lot of young dogs, Ripper takes the view that commands are to be obeyed only while the humans are watching. He subsides with a small whine when he realises I'm not messing about. I return my attention to Marge. "As I say, I don't mind making the effort to keep him under control, but I expect you to pull your weight too. Indulge him all you want at home, but under _my_ roof he'll behave himself. Understand?"

I've deliberately borrowed the phrasing and diction of Vernon and Marge's father, who was a gouty old bully of a tyrant in his own home. It's enough to give Marge pause.

Not much of a pause, alas. I can smell the sherry, and I have a sinking feeling that she's been over the drink-drive limit all the way from West Wittering. "Now look here Vernon -"

"Oh, put a sock in it, Marge. This is _my_ home and _my_ family built with _my_ hard work. I didn't complain when you got the lion's share of the inheritance and the family home. You know why? I _agree_ with father that you weren't able to make your own way in the world. It's why he never made you move out. If you weren't living off the dividends on top of the pittance your dog-breeding brings in, you'd be on the dole. I don't begrudge you it, but try and remember that you're in _my house_. Behave accordingly." Vernon, in his dreaming inarticulacy, is rather cheerful about this. His big sister has had a long run of mildly bullying her little brother, and Vernon had dreamed of taking her to task about it for _years_. He just didn't quite have the chat for it. And, you know, didn't have the ability to put magic into his voice to give extra weight to his words. It's totally cheating, and I totally don't care.

Marge's eyes narrow. She's one of those idiots who thinks of things in terms of dominance and submission - it's part of why all her dogs are so badly trained. She's trying to come up with a suitable comeback: when she and Vernon were both children she'd've just thumped him, of course. For me, it's child's play to slip in through her eyes and make her mind replay a few personal embarrassments. Things that come back to her in the armpit of bad nights when she's not had quite enough to drink to keep the dreams at bay. She sags a little where she stands. "Perhaps Ripper can have the run of the back garden? He's a little boisterous for smaller children, so perhaps you have a point."

Just to drive the point home, a little of one of Tom's first tricks - animal control - has Ripper come to heel without any hesitating or looking to his mistress for confirmation. She needs to understand that I won't stand for any of her malarkey, and that she should harbour no illusions of being in charge here. Mostly, it has to be said, so I'm not tempted to lamp her one if she has a go at Harry. Ripper is quite happy to go out and have a sniff around the back garden away from the scary man who makes him do as he's told. I don't doubt that there'll be a few burdensome turds by the time we're done eating dinner, and I'll probably have to apologise to Petunia for that and the damage if, as seems likely, Ripper is also a Digger.

Over dinner - Marge follows the boys' example and behaves herself, to my considerable relief, albeit that it doesn't give me any chance to have at her how I've planned. She grumbles a bit about the food actually having flavour - not her words, obviously, but it's what she _means_ \- and tries to have a go at Petunia over it. I shut her down hard by making it quite clear that it's what I wanted.

She's also gets a little grumpy about me cutting her off after her second glass of wine - it's the eighties and takes effort to get decent wine in England at this point in history, it's actually annoying me watching her try to swill it. She doesn't have an argument to offer against my pointing out that driving over the limit is a crime and she wasn't raised as part of the criminal classes. Drunken joyriding is for _hooligans_ Margie, and there are boys needing an example set. Petunia spots what I'm doing and starts giving me a bit of a gimlet-eyed stare. She doesn't care for Marge, never has, and frankly I doubt Vernon would if it weren't for the whole 'family matters' nonsense that everyone has spouted at him his entire life. Nevertheless, she doesn't approve of me baiting her the way I'm doing.

"Well, we know what irresponsible driving can do," Marge says at length. There's a sly tone of voice and a very speaking side-eye at Harry.

_Gotcha._ Just the opening I need.

"Harry, Dudley?" Both boys give me their attention, they'd been talking quietly about Transformers. "If you're finished with your main course, go watch telly for a bit. Your Aunt Marge and I need to have a grown-up discussion. We'll call you back in for pudding."

I've no idea if it's the magic or what, but the room's decidedly chilly all of a sudden, and Harry and Dudley scamper _tout' suite_. I've been baiting the woman for a response I can use since she got here, but even with all my hints she's gone for the 'have a go at the orphan kid's dead parents' angle. She's given me just about the _perfect _target.

"Marjorie Eileen Dursley. There are _limits_. Limits which exist for very good -"

"Vernon! How can you -"

"ENOUGH." I don't shout, but I put some body into it. And punctuate it with a slap to the table that jingles the cutlery. "Bad enough to speak ill of the dead, but to do it in the presence of their orphaned child? Have you no _shame?_"

She's gone all wide-eyed. She's used to Vernon deflecting and changing the subject and resorting to sycophantic agreement to avoid the possibility of conflict with his big sister, who lorded her status as favourite child over him whenever he ever tried to stand up to her. I _hope_ she's just realised that she no longer has that support to rely on. She gapes, all fish-mouthed, stuck for something to say in response.

"I _won't_ have my son set such a bad example, Marjorie. Especially not under my own roof. You've driven here under the influence, brought an ill-trained potentially dangerous dog with you, tried to object to me remedying your lack of control over the animal, tried to render yourself unfit to drive in abuse of my hospitality and now _this?_ Again, have you no _shame?_"

For best effect she has to be rendered speechless by this, and since I don't _have_ to take chances I get into her mind and tongue-tie her while the moment builds properly. I know _why_ she was trying to get herself unfit to drive: it's so she doesn't have to drive back at night because Vernon always caves and lets her stay. Me cutting her off before she can get in that state is a new development, because usually Vernon is getting sloshed along with her.

Once I've judged that she's stewed long enough - Petunia's giving me worried glances, because she's used to anger coming out as ranting and shouting, not the quiet, measured verbal assassination I indulge in when my fuse burns down, not that she's seen me get _really_ nasty - I go on. "I have two little boys in this house whose future depends on the example they are set. And your behaviour, Marjorie Eileen Dursley, _will not do_. I don't mind you picking a favourite. I don't mind you being, frankly, an irresponsible dog-owner so long as you keep it under control _here_. I can even cope, somewhat, with you drinking to excess in front of the children, I can always use you as a _bad_ _example_. What I will _not_ have is outright criminality - drunk drivers kill people. And where you crossed the _line_ that separates _civilisation_ from _barbarism_ is when you sought to hurt an orphaned child by speaking ill of his parents. If that's how you mean to behave, I can't have you influencing Dudley."

She pales. I can see beads of sweat on her upper lip. For all her many and horrible faults, she does actually care about Dudley. Well on the way to being a forty-year-old spinster, spoiling her little Duddykins is as near to motherhood as she'll ever get. _Ought_ ever to get, come right to it. If Vernon disowns her, she's facing a lifetime of outright solitude. I can see it in the thoughts that churn through her mind as I make the threat. Colonel (retd.) Fubster tolerates her because he likes dogs, judging from the memories that flash by. She knows she's never going to get anywhere with him, and I reckon on some level she knows he's as gay as a hat full of glitter. It's certainly obvious enough to me, at any rate.

She croaks something that might be the start of a response, which I ignore.

"For your general fund of information," I go on, "and I probably shouldn't be telling you this, the car-crash is a cover story. We're not allowed to know the details, but Petunia's sister and her husband died in their nation's service. We're all that Harry has left, and his safety and therefore Dudley's safety depend on everyone thinking his parents were simply unlucky on the roads. Not, as I'm given to understand, heroes who simply can't be publicly recognised. Remember that: it's a cover story, not a stick for you to use to beat a child. Which, since I for one want to be a better man than our father, won't stand for either."

"I- I understand. I think I should go, now."

She suits action to words, and I heave a sigh of relief as she and Ripper pull out of the drive. I suppose I _ought_ to have made her stay and at least get some more food down her to mitigate the alcohol - she'd have been about on the legal limit - but I'd given her a fairly serious verbal beating already: making her sit still for an awkward pudding course would probably have made her less safe on the road, not more.

"So, pudding?" Petunia asks, with forced brightness.

"Yes, of course. I can only hope that she goes home to seriously rethink her life. Most of the same problems as Vernon, of course."

"I wouldn't say it to Vernon, but I never cared for her. I just wish you could have done that away from the dinner table."

I shrug. "I _did_ try and warn her over the 'phone that there were some changes around here. I'm afraid she's rather too used to getting her own way, though. I suspect nothing short of catching her in the act and rubbing her nose in it was going to work. It _could_ have been a lot worse, she's certainly capable of it."

That metaphor amuses Petunia. Ripper isn't the only dog Marge has brought to Privet Drive. Her previous favourite, Hussar, had a habit of disgracing himself on the hall carpet. Although, fair play to the late Hussar, I'm of the view that the hall carpet is ugly enough to _deserve it_. "Do you think she'll improve?"

"We can hope. I suspect she'll need slapping down a time or two more, though. I can only hope Vernon's up to it by the time I start letting him fly solo. Or at least develops the backbone to disown her entirely. She's a bad influence on him."

The first week of the new year I get a call from Marge. Apparently there were other things going on in her life, and my harsh words - she calls it 'straight talking' - made her decide on a New Year's Resolution to quit drinking. She has attended her first AA meeting. I wish her good luck, and mean it.

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

Primary school nativity plays are the most adorable things ever. I've no idea whether this is a thing anywhere outside the UK, but five-to-seven year old kids doing the Story Of Baby Jesus is just _beyond_ brilliant. Between my own kids and the nieces and nephews I have a massive store of Future Embarrassment Photos.

Pantomime, for the benefit of you Johnny Foreigner types, is a christmas tradition that involves putting on double-entendre-laden plays full of audience participation, cross-dressing and sly digs at political and public figures and taking the kids along to see them. It's better than I've made it sound, honest. (All of my British readers are now yelling "OH NO IT ISN'T!" to which I say: OH YES IT IS!)

A-Levels _had_ been going for more than thirty years as at 1985, so Mal is worrying over nothing on this point.

The whole magical survey thing is borrowed more from the movie continuity, where the set dressing often includes old-timey scientific instruments. (Only Dumbledore's office is so adorned in the books.) I reckon there are at least _some_ wizards with the kind of inquiring minds that would invent instruments and methods for measuring magic because they're so obviously _useful_.

Johnny Morris: his show Animal Magic was one of my favourites as a little boy and it was off the air by 1983 when he retired. He more or less invented animal voice-over comedy as a genre as well as educating entire generations about natural history and conservation. We shall not look upon his like again, alas.

Finally, Hussar was named for Colonel (actually Major when he retired one step ahead of being cashiered, it's not uncommon for retired officers to big themselves up a bit) Fubster's old regiment. He was, in fact, a Gay Hussar. Sorry not sorry.

Fanfic recommendation: A World Out of Balance by Gehayi, available only on AO3 as far as I can tell, along with the rest of the works in that series. It's a reaction to JKR's cultural tone-deafness in her writing around magical America. I won't go so far as to say I'm adopting Gehayi's ideas wholesale, but there's definitely _something_ there. (And it's not like JKR wasn't tone-deaf about her _own_ culture, when all's said and done.)


	11. Going down the bank

DISCLAIMER: Does everything Dumbledore say about the blood protections on Harry and on Number Four Privet Drive make sense as a coherent whole with no internal contradictions? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 11

_The first week of the new year I get a call from Marge. Apparently there were other things going on in her life, and my harsh words - she calls it 'straight talking' - made her decide on a New Year's Resolution to quit drinking. And has attended her first AA meeting. I wish her good luck, and mean it._

-oOo-

Marge's phone call - I'm not pinning _too_ much hope on it, most addiction recovery programs have a fairly high failure rate on the first attempt - comes after a week of intense calculation and back-and-forth with the reference books. I _think_ I've got a grip on what the old spell Lily called on is, at least as to the general idea of it.

It's possible, apparently, to set up a great big magic in one of a number of ways that can then be called on with a lot less effort later. It's how a lot of defensive magics on homes and places of business are set up. For example, a buried runestone, often under the hearth for the extra symbolic oomph, can give you animated grotesques to defend your castle that come to life when you speak the right spell. The reference I've got doesn't say whether the incantation for the activation spell is 'piertotum locomotor', but I have to say, I kind of want to use that spell too. Although I'd go with shop-window mannequins with built-in guns so's I can have my own army of Autons.

Whatever. The spell Lily found and called on, it's big, it's powerful - _actually_ off the chart in the appendices to volume 3 of Magic of Measurement - it's powered by blood sacrifice and _actual_ human sacrifice, and its purpose is defensive. Exactly _how_ it defends is beyond my ability to figure out beyond the largest of generalities, but I _can_ see how Dumbledore got to the conclusion that it had to do with whatever saved Harry that night. Lily had a hand in that, and who else would have created defences for this house? He clearly didn't do enough analytical charm work to notice that the dates didn't match _at all_.

I'm guessing that whatever's on Harry is quite potent stuff too, and powered by the death of at least one of his parents it would read very similar to blood magic unless you took time and trouble like I did. There's a whole monograph on it in Magic of Measurement: blood magic, willing martyrdom and unwilling human sacrifice can all be used to lay and seal powerful magics, and in the context of decommissioning ancient tombs (Egypt is, apparently, lifting with the bloody things and the cleanup effort is projected to finish sometime in the late third millennium) it's _vitally important_ to know which you're trying to break. The similarity in signatures has apparently undone more than a few curse-breakers who've picked the wrong method of attack.

Dumbledore's assumptions - reasonable ones, in the circumstances, however wrong they turned out to be - leave open the question of why he added more spells, along apparently with something that will knacker the whole arrangement on the day of Harry's seventeenth birthday. So I assume: they took pains to evacuate everyone in the last book, which they wouldn't have done if this absolute _monster_ of a defensive spell was going to stay up. There's that old quote - Mark Twain? I forget - about no editor liking the taste of a story until he's peed in it himself, and I suspect something like that may have informed Dumbledore's decision-making here.

What he cast was a whole suite of spells meant to link other spells one to another that stitched together the protection on Harry with the protection on Number Four. Along with those, he set up something that is clearly an owl-post preventer, and a collection of spells designed to interfere in decision-making. I _hope_ they're to reinforce the instructions in his letter about keeping Harry's presence on the down-low. Mostly because I could see the likes of Dumbledore assuming that stupid muggles would need a bit of magical coercion to keep them on the straight and narrow.

I could also see him either not thinking through the consequences properly or not checking back to make sure everything was running properly. Which was pretty idiotic. People who were already on the ragged edge of their mental health, given shocking news and an unexpected responsibility? Sheer common sense would tell you not to add mind-control magic to the mix. A high-handed wizard who on his best day merely doesn't give a shit about muggles, with less than 24 hours' study time working with magic he has unknowingly misidentified? We're lucky the Dursleys didn't keep Harry secret by burying him under the patio.

It's for that reason I'm confident there isn't a compulsion to abuse Harry in among this lot: the Dursleys behaviour was _always_ going to be abusive to some extent, so a compulsion to escalate that abuse would have probably given us the likes of the Victoria Climbié case fifteen years early. Still, Dumbledore's meddling - attributing it, as one ought, to stupidity rather than malice - definitely made things worse. Being a horribly sat-on poor relation is bad enough: Harry got to be a horribly sat-on poor relation kept in solitary confinement most of the time and deprived of a year of primary education.

The other elephant in this particular room is the question of Telling Harry He's A Wizard. Finding that there are spells on this house that affect decision-making causes me to question my _own_ thoughts on the matter; I'm not usually as given to pondering decisions as long as I have this one, which I notice when the existence of these spells prompts me to examine my own decision-making.

There's definitely _something_ going on. The Dursleys certainly would have, had I not intervened, put a lot of effort into denying the existence of magic altogether and punishing Harry for expressing any interest in anything even vaguely related, and that's far beyond anything that could be explained by Petunia's jealousy of Lily or any offence James Potter could have inadvertently given Vernon. Arabella Figg is under orders not to tell Harry - she admits as much in the books - but Dumbledore's letter only mentions not letting Harry know about his fame in the wizarding world. So it's _probable_ that there's something to reinforce that 'don't tell him about his fame (reasonable) that however unintentionally nudged them in the 'no such thing as magic' direction (which is batshit crazy and if Obscurials are a thing, dangerous). There may even be an actual 'don't tell anyone about magic' spell in there as well: the Statute of Secrecy being what it is, it's probably a fairly standard spell for the likes of muggleborns' parents or places near areas of high magical activity. It'd save the obliviators a lot of work, judiciously applied.

Once I've carried the reasoning that far, I can at least deal with the possibility that there's something affecting my thought processes. Which I'm probably better-equipped to deal with than most wizards, quite frankly. Cognitive behavioural therapy didn't work so well for me when I was working through my issues, it took a course of psychodynamic psychotherapy to start getting a handle on things. What CBT _is_ good for is reflection and self-examination when it comes to how you react to things and make decisions. And, frankly, I'm pretty sure now I examine the matter that I'm being affected, at least during such times as I've been inside human heads.

Mind-affecting spells aren't a sure-fire thing, fortunately. The Imperius curse is so feared because it works damn near perfectly on damn near everyone and is versatile enough to run the gamut from making your victim a total puppet to making your victim a near-undetectable Manchurian Candidate-style sleeper agent. Compulsions can't do much more than shape a general trend of behaviour, don't always work, and _never_ work on aware targets with enough wit to resist. Even Vernon second-helpings-of-pie-don't-mind-if-I-do Dursley would have enough willpower if he was made aware of the problem.

Solution: _get started_. It would be easy to spend time on devising a program of managed release of information and lose months to procrastination, it's how magic like this _works_. Taking an immediate first step would immediately break the compulsion, so I get Petunia to take Dudley out for the day to go do something educational with a wad of Tom Riddle's cash.

As soon as they're out of the car at the station to get the train into London - Dudley wants to go see London Zoo - I turn to Harry. "You're wondering why you don't get to go to London Zoo?"

He nods. He's looked a bit sad about it all morning, actually. He was probably hoping to go talk to some snakes.

"Well," I say, pulling out of the station car-park, "you will one day. After all, you got to see Alton Towers before Dudley did, remember?"

He nods, brightening up a bit.

"We've got a bit of an adventure of our own, today. Remember me telling you that magic was real? We're going to do some today, when we get home. Not very exciting magic, but it's still going to be _really cool_."

"Am _I_ going to be doing magic? I don't know how." Harry looks worried: he's had a few experiences at school of not knowing stuff the other kids did and has had to be reassured.

"Well, you don't have to know anything for this magic, what you have to do is mostly just sit still while I do the hard parts."

"Will I be able to learn magic when I'm older?"

"You might, especially if you learn all your lessons at school and eat your greens." Telling him he's definitely a wizard now will stop me from using the prospect to motivate him. At least that _better_ be the reasoning, I'm getting a little paranoid about mind-altering magic if I'm honest with myself.

"Will Dudley?" Actually a good question.

"Probably not. Dudley's not really all about the clever stuff, is he? Nothing wrong with that, of course, be a funny old world if we were all the same, but can you imagine him doing extra work at school and reading books if we didn't make him?"

Harry giggles a bit. Dudley has improved out of all recognition over the last few months, but he's clearly not destined for the rarefied heights of academia any more than his father was. "No," Harry says, "He's still reading Peter and Jane books. _I_ can nearly read silently already, Miss Coonan says I'm really good at it."

"Well, keep it up. Get good marks on all your tests and good reports at the end of term, and when you're old enough you can learn magic."

"How old is old enough?"

"Old enough to read magic books, which might take a while. Most of them are in really small writing with no pictures, after all." To a five-and-half-year-old this is about the same level of challenge as hieroglyphics. "So work hard on your reading. I'll make sure we've got some easy magic books in the house so you can try when your reading's a bit better." I'll also sort out a shelf of kids books beyond Harry's current level so he can challenge himself on the regular. I have fond memories of the Chronicles of Prydain from about his age which - I catch myself on. There's an actual _horcrux_ in those books. Or, at least, a for-the-kiddies depiction of a bad guy that makes use of one. Lloyd Alexander didn't confine himself to welsh legends when writing them, he drew on the russian folk-tale of Koschei the Deathless among others. Snap decision: let Harry read them. He's not going to be confronted with his own inevitable death, and getting to the right conclusion from Dumbledore's damnable game of hints and suggestions a lot faster can only be a good thing.

However, focus. I can't let myself be distracted into not doing what I mean to today. "There's an important thing to remember, though. Remember me telling you about good secrets and bad secrets and how to tell the difference? Magic is a good secret, one we can't tell anyone at school. Can you think of why it might be a good secret?"

Harry takes time to think, a habit I've been encouraging. "Is it because people might be frightened?"

"That's a very good answer. Magic is cool and fun and useful, but to people who can't do it, it can be quite scary and they might try and bully you because they're scared." I'm pretty sure the witch-hunt stories in the magical history books I've bought are complete cobblers, as it happens - _The Wonderful Discouerie of Witches In The County of Lancashire_ is exactly the same text I remember from my own universe, and they were hanged, not burned, for murder and destruction of livestock, not magic. (You can argue about the harshness of the penalty and whether or not their convictions were sound, but that such things ought to be punished is pretty unarguable.) The version being taught to wizard kids is _very_ different and paints the muggle authorities in a much worse light. Still, people can get awfully twitchy around things they don't understand: to quote Agent K: 'A _person_ is smart. _People_ are dumb, panicky animals.'

The main motivation, though, is not getting Harry done under the Statute of Secrecy before he even gets to Hogwarts. "The rule, Harry, is that we don't say anything about magic to anyone unless we're really, really sure they already know. Which means you can only talk about magic that's not in a story-book with me or your Aunt Petunia. You can't tell Dudley because he might forget and tell someone he shouldn't, even if he doesn't mean to. That includes talking to snakes, by the way. That's a magic thing that you shouldn't talk about with anyone, even if they know about other magic, because people are _really_ scared of snakes, even snakes that aren't complete gits like Bronson."

Harry nods his assent and we arrive back at Privet Drive.

Running the magic survey on a person (or an object, the techniques are similar) rather than a plot of land is a lot less fuss and bother. It takes us about an hour to get everything set up - much of that being the heavy, sweaty business of horsing the plywood in from the garage and getting it onto the dining table without breaking anything and Harry is hugely impressed with my ability to make the smaller bits of apparatus float into position with just a wave of my hand. "Just like Luke Skywalker!"

Harry gets to sit cross-legged on the table amid the figures I've drawn with chalk ahead of time while I write a simple runic spell around the circle he's sitting in.

"Right, all you have to do is hold still for a little while with your hand on this prism _here_ while the light shines through it. It'll make a pattern appear on the wall over _there_ which will tell us about the magic on you."

"There's magic on me?"

"Yep. Your mum and dad could do magic. Remember Tom?"

Harry frowns. He's still cross about Tom, even if he's no longer having nightmares about the fucker. "He was magic, you told me. You got his magic when you gobbled him up. Will I have to gobble someone up?"

"No, magic's like your hair colour, or what colour your eyes are. You can sometimes have it because your mummy or daddy had it, so if you've got it, that's where it'll come from."

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

"But Aunt Petunia doesn't have magic, does she?" _Well done_, Harry. Spotting the connection and following up the implications, we'll make a boffin out of you yet!

"If she does, it's not as much as your mum did. She's very good at gardening, though, so we think she might be helping the plants grow by magic. It's very small magic that you can hardly tell is there, though. Your mum had a lot more magic."

"If Aunt Petunia has magic, will Dudley?"

"Probably not. Uncle Vernon," and damn me if it _still_ doesn't feel strange to be talking about a man out of his own mouth like that, "has only ordinary person magic, enough to be alive but no more, so Dudley will probably be the same. It's like if you had a short mummy and daddy, you'd probably grow up to be short too. It's the same with magic. _Your_ mummy and daddy had very _tall_ magic, so we think yours at least won't be very short. That's just a guess, though. Sometimes tall people have short children, and short people have tall children. All of my children were taller than me, for example."

"Tall like how tall they were, not tall like having a lot of magic?"

I chuckle at that. It's been so long since my kids were this age that I sometimes forget that you have to be careful with metaphors until they're quite a bit older. "Just as you say, Harry. I'm talking about tall and short kids because that's easy to understand, you see it every day. That helps you to understand kids who have a little or lots of magic even though you can't see it."

"Cor."

"Now, see how there's a pattern on the wall?"

"It looks like a rainbow! With all marks on it!"

"It does. One of my magic books says what all of these marks and colours mean, but I don't need to look it up, because I know this one. It's a special magic to help keep you safe from bad people like Tom. Bad _magic_ people, I should say, because it wouldn't stop someone like Piers Polkiss from pushing you over in the playground." Harry's got Dudley for that sort of thing now, the little chunk was vibrating with pride when I told him that sticking up for the littler kids was the sort of thing that a Good Knight Bold And True would do. Arise, Sir Dudley, and all that.

"How does it keep me safe?"

"It's a magic made up from how much your mummy and daddy loved you." I would sooner stick my essentials in a mincer and turn the crank than tell Harry it was powered by their willing deaths. I don't need any kind of compulsion magic to keep that from him until he's a _lot_ older, "and, well, one way it might do it is make a magic ghost come along and gobble someone up if they were being a baddy at you."

Harry giggles at that characterisation of protective magic. Thing is, it might be _true_. Magic works in some decidedly - to my muggle-educated mind - screwy ways. A common theme of protective magic, in all the theory books that deal with it, is 'misfortune and confusion to our foes' which suggests that it influences probability and decision making, giving an attacker a run of bad luck and a tendency to make sub-optimal decisions. Just like what got the scar-instance of Tom Riddle turned into a lightsaber shish-kebab. If the Big Spell works that way then tying Harry to it wouldn't be quite such a bad idea, now I think about it. It'd explain a _lot_ about the Death Eaters' performance in the books. Not least the kind of rushes of shit to the brains they suffered in Deathly Hallows, which let Harry & Co win it _quite_ against the merits of the matter. The whole story should have ended in blood and tragedy at Malfoy Manor, but apparently strip-searching prisoners is muggle nonsense or something.

A bit of book-work with the spectrum image tells me that the most I'm going to know about the magic on Harry is 'powerful, non-standard, lethal defence with unusual trigger conditions', which may or may not have subtler effects on potential enemies. Literally nothing about it is listed in any of the 'things you can expect to encounter' and I'd be _completely_ in the dark if I hadn't read a detailed description of it burning Quirinus Quirrell's face clean off in six and a bit years' time. An event which I'd like to prevent, since giving the fucker information about the booby trap installed on Harry before I can get all his horcruxes strikes me as a poor tactical move, and I can't guarantee to have got all of them by then.

We spend the rest of the day going through all the cool stuff in the magic books I've bought with Tom's money (stored in a lockbox with undetectable extension, shrink-on-command and featherweight charms on it, a steal at two hundred galleons and proof against curious five-year-olds). Harry agrees that he will have to do a lot of work at school before he can read these, but now he's seen that there are books with actual moving pictures I can see his motivation kicking up a notch or three.

What he _doesn't_ get to see is my wand. _Preciousssssss_. Being tempted to read above his current level is one thing - a good thing, and keeping books beyond my official reading level about the house was one of the few things my parents actually got _right_ in raising me - but being tempted to pick up a wand and try and do magic at his age? The potential for disaster is sufficiently great that I don't want him to know it _exists_ until he's old enough to reliably follow rules.

-oOo-

"Hello, Special Circumstances, Huw Rhys speaking, how can I help you?" After getting bounced around a whole lot of cut-glass RP telephone voices, a proper from-the-valleys welsh voice on the line is quite the breath of fresh air. Look you, boyo, fancy a leek?

"Yes, hello, I'd like to come in and talk to someone about opening an account." It's taken me nearly an hour of getting passed around department after department at the bank, most of it spent trying to find someone who'd even _heard_ of the Special Circumstances Customer Department. After finishing up collecting the last of Tom's easily-accessible stashes of gold and cash - all the ones on mainland Britain, that is - I've got nearly a quarter million sat in the lockbox in the escritoire cabinet. Even after all I've spent. Tom was a _hoarder_. Anti-theft charms only provide peace of mind up to a point, this money should be earning _interest_ damn it.

"Are you sure you're through to the right department? We don't actually do much business via the telephone, you see…"

"I'd expect not. Ah, I'm not sure how much I'm actually _allowed_ to say over the phone, what with the secrecy laws and all."

"Well, tell me as much as you feel comfortable with. If you _are_ eligible for this particular Coutts service, you know what you can and can't say." I can _hear_ the bleeder grinning at the other end of the line. Thing is, until I _know_ he's a wizard, squib, or certified Knowledgeable Muggle (which is apparently a thing, the Ministry does literature for the parents of muggleborns, available at Flourish and Blotts with a commentary booklet, a sickle and thirteen knuts, and it's surprisingly informative and non-patronising) I can't blow the gaff on magic. So I have to find a way of showing mine without _actually_ dropping trou and waving it about before he shows me his. The fact that I know how to use a telephone is probably counting against me. It also wouldn't even slightly surprise me to learn that there are people who try and entrap wizards working in the muggle economy into breaching the Statute. A lot of wizards are _really _snotty about muggle contact of any kind and will grass at the drop of a (pointy) hat.

"The long and the short of it," I say, mustering my skills of obfuscatory bullshit, "is that you have a partner institution that deals _exclusively_ with people who are eligible, but their financial management consists, in a very real sense, of stuffing their customers' money in a hole in the ground. If they _have_ interest-bearing accounts, they don't advertise them, and there are more convenient options for safe-deposit storage. A sad thing to say about an institution that calls itself a bank, but there you go. Fortunately, one of their tellers happened to let me know that there's an element of common ownership between that institution and your own, and that there are some advantages to banking with you - for eligible customers such as myself - that would satisfy the relevant treaty between the jurisdiction they do business in and what I like to think of as the real world while also letting me have my money actually work for me. Rather than, as I say - "

"Having your money in a hole in the ground, yes. I do rather take your point." He sounds amused. I may have had something of a waspish tone to my voice toward the end, there.

"Have I said enough to at least make an appointment where we _don't_ have to double-talk our way around the problem? Not the least of which, I might add, is that there's a treaty-mandated fixed exchange rate between sterling and the currency they do business in that gives even _my_ limited economic nouse a _serious_ case of the willies."

"I rather think so, yes." There's a moment of hand-over-the-mouthpiece talking, "I should have the appointment book in front of me momentarily, If I could have a name?"

"Reynolds, Malcolm Reynolds. No middle name," largely because I couldn't be arsed thinking one up: while I enjoyed Firefly I wasn't a big enough fan to actually memorise details like that, "and I should say up front that I'm quite possibly a little more special circumstances than you might be used to. Which is all I can say over the phone, I'm afraid, I should just like you to brace yourself for something a little out of the ordinary. Even by what I suspect your standards to be."

"I promise to keep an open mind, Mr. Reynolds, we really _do_ deal with all sorts in this office. Now, if I could take the absolute bare minimum of details -"

The appointment is easy enough to set up, and I'm on the Strand three days later in good time for an 11am appointment. I've told Grunnings that there are some issues with Harry's trust fund: five-year-olds just _don't_ straight up inherit in the real world, and while the Public Trustee will do, and often has to if the kid's parents died intestate, anyone with any sense sets up a proper trust that isn't quite as rule-bound as the government office. I'd mentioned that to explain taking a day's holiday on short notice, but Vernon's boss does the decent thing and tells him to take it as buckshee paid time off. This was the company Vernon was seething with resentment at?

Coutts looks very much like it will when my old self visited it ten years or so from now on professional business. Which is to say, nothing like a bank established in the seventeenth century. I've no idea when exactly the redevelopment was, but it looks like a set from Logan's Run, or possibly Thunderbirds, with an option on Joe 90. You can tell that it's an establishment that caters to Serious Money, though, the receptionists look like they're moonlighting from their jobs as dowager countesses. (You go a notch down the ladder, front-of-house is off-duty supermodels. No, I've no idea how this works either.)

Mr. Rhys is a fortyish standard-issue Cheerful Welshman. Which I'm glad of: the alternative is the Lugubrious Welshman and they're tiresome to converse with at any length. He's long, lean, mildly balding and looks like he was _born_ to wear a three-piece pinstripe suit. The effect is of the more sympathetic sort of undertaker, sensitive but reminding you that your dear departed wouldn't want you to be _too_ downhearted about it all, they've gone on to better things after all.

Once we're situated in a conference room with tea and biscuits and I'm done glossing over the pleasantries with ruminations on the man's character, Rhys gets to business.

"I have to admit I'm intrigued by the thought of a more-special-than-usual special services customer, Mr. Reynolds, but I think perhaps I might ask you for at least something to establish your _bona fides_? You understand we have to be _careful_, see?"

"I quite understand," I tell him, "and perhaps if I mention that I own a handsomely-carved stick, which I propose to show you?"

"A stick, you say? It's _intrigued_ I am, look you." I've been playing up my Lancashire accent a bit, and he's responding in kind. When you get surrounded by plummy voices the temptation to haul off and give the buggers a mouthful of authentic provincial gibberish gets almost overwhelming at times and I suspect Mr. Rhys feels the same way.

I take my wand out between two fingers - the etiquette for this sort of thing is very similar to handling a loaded firearm in a tense situation - and lay it on the table in front of me. "Behold," I say, "my stick."

Rhys grins. "A handsome stick it is, too, a handsome stick. As it happens, I have one of my own of a similar character." He lays his wand on the table just like I did. From the looks it's alder - the orangey-gold tone of the wood is quite distinctive - and less, for want of a better word, chunky than mine.

"So," he says after we've returned our wands to our pockets, "I don't recall your name from Hogwarts -?"

"Never went," I tell him, "and when I say I'm out of the ordinary, it's because Hogwarts wasn't actually an option in the place and time of my mortal birth. I'm currently discorporate, you see, and borrowing young Vernon here when I need to do business in the material world."

Rhys is momentarily taken aback, and then frowns. "There's a more usual way of describing arrangements like that, Mr. Reynolds. We use words like _possession_."

"Vernon's wife consented in her capacity as next of kin." This is _radically_ overselling Petunia's attitude to my presence, of course, but the real story is basically too lunatic to tell. "The story is quite a long and involved one, but essentially Vernon was in very poor health, mental and physical, when I happened along, and in consideration of me putting him sufficiently to rights that he can manage for himself, she agreed that my taking up residence in her husband was for the best. Not least because I was better able to look to the welfare of the two children they have care of." I give Rhys as speaking a look as I can manage out of Vernon's face, contriving to imply that the kids were being abused without saying so out loud.

"Am I to presume that Mr. Vernon's family would be magical themselves?"

I don't correct Rhys's assumption about Vernon's name: I was expecting at least some negative reaction to my being a possessing spirit and it could still be that I have to scarper, "They're not. The magical members of the family were Vernon's sister-in-law and her husband, and their orphaned son who is one of the children I mentioned. His parents were killed in the recent unpleasantness, and Mrs. Vernon's the only family the poor lad had left."

"And your own, how can I put this, discorporation, if it's not an indelicate question?"

"Unrelated, road traffic accident as it happens, and I'm working on a more satisfactory solution than borrowing Vernon. Difficult, the extant methods I know about are morally repugnant or unhygienic and usually both."

"I'll take your word for that. Well, if it's any consolation, you're far from the only client we have who's currently incorporeal. Gringotts have to comply with treaty regulation as to who they do business with. Here on the non magical side of things we are in the happy position that the laws don't specifically exclude _anyone_ other than children and lunatics from having legal capacity to do business with us. One of the simpler methods, of course, is to form a shell company to hold your assets for you. There are a number of jurisdictions that are suitably accommodating -"

It's like I'm back in the saddle of being a lawyer. I never actually practised as a company-commercial solicitor - I started out doing civil engineering and construction litigation and went from there into IT law and ended my career as a local government officer - but I did my articles of clerkship in a firm that had it as a primary specialty, so I know the tune and can dance the simpler steps.

Mr. Rhys (Hufflepuff, class of '61) knows not just the more complicated steps, but a large repertoire of flashy routines. He makes it sound simple - I know it's not, but I now have an expert on board - to set up a small constellation of companies in Jersey, Barbados and Aruba - the Aruba one is the _real_ cut-out identity-wise, their incorporation laws are _hilarious_ back here in the 80s - that will allow me to hold and manage real property while Coutts handles the cash and investments. They've got a lot of practise in concealing the fact that wealth is held by improbably long-lived individuals, vampires and alchemists being a particular specialty. When I mention that my initial deposit will involve liquidating a couple of hundred grand's worth of bullion I go from having his attention to having his interest. When I mention that there will be a considerable movement of other assets in the not-too-distant future he has to stop our planning session for a moment.

"Mr. Reynolds," he says, "can you assure me that what we're dealing with here is not the proceeds of crime?" There _are_ money laundering regulations in 1985, but they're nowhere _near_ as stringent as the ones I had to operate under in the mid-to-late 90s, and practically non-existent compared to the early twenty-first century version.

"I can," I say, smiling. "I've referred to the late unpleasantness on the magical side of things, yes? It was, bluntly, a war, and since there were muggle casualties the United Kingdom was technically a belligerent. I've taken all of the money and assets as prize of war from the enemy, since I've been able to track where it was all squirrelled away. Happily, the Prize Acts weren't passed on the magical side of things, so I don't need a formal condemnation order from a Prize Court. The enemy lost it, I took it, it's mine."

"Even personal property?"

"Not the case here. The other side had a distinctly monarchical command structure, so there was no distinction between the personal resources of their supreme command and their resources as a belligerent. There's no treaty formally ending the war, and despite popular belief he's a wholly inadequate amount of dead. So it's not even looting, and none of it is subject to probate or _bona vacantia_." This _might_ pass the laugh test as an argument in Public International Law, but it's a very thin _might_. All I need for present purposes, however, is a figleaf to cover my outright pillaging: I'm not arguing before a court, I'm persuading a banker to take my money. A _much_ lower standard of probative credibility is applied, to the annoyance of law enforcement agencies generally.

Rhys has gone pale. He's a clever chap and has caught the implication. "You mean -"

"Best not to voice that thought, chum," I tell him, "you've had my assurance pro-forma that this isn't the proceeds of serious or drug-related crime, which is all you need for the bank. On the magical side of things you're better off with your plausible deniability."

"You're not bloody wrong, boyo," he says, sitting back in his chair and grabbing the telephone. "We'll need more tea, I reckon. You say the bastard's not _dead?_"

"Not entirely," I say, "you've said you deal on the regular with people who didn't necessarily stop when their hearts did. I've first-hand evidence of my own senses that he took at least one measure to survive being discorporated back in '81."

"We all knew he was a monster, but -"

"Sticking around doesn't make him a monster. The method he chose requires monstrous acts, I'm sorry to say. You ever run into a ghost at Hogwarts named Myrtle?"

He nods. "A moment," he says, and calls through for another service of tea.

When he puts the phone back down I go on, "One of his early victims. Human sacrifice, although mercifully enough she can't remember the details."

"It would explain the poor thing's constant wailing," he says, "the girls all used to complain about her haunting the loo. Brazen of him to do it in school, mind."

We're interrupted briefly with a very speedy replacement tea-tray - Vernon agitates for more biscuits but I only unbend as far as one lump of sugar in my cup of tea, one more than I personally prefer - and I finish my spiel. "The point is that he's able to make a comeback, the Ministry didn't hang _any_ of the buggers who followed him and didn't jail nearly enough for anyone to consider the matter properly settled. It was denazification all over again, I'm afraid, with even less excuse for letting the scum off scot-free. So when, not if, when he comes back I want him delayed by having to replace all of the resources I've taken out of his hands."

"Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics," Rhys says, nodding along. "Normally we'd be very keen to preserve confidentiality, but…"

"Well, I want confidentiality in so far as I'm the source," I tell him, taking his meaning, "but feel free to share the bad news, unattributed, with anyone you feel is sound. Obviously, we don't want any of his former minions heartened by the prospect of an imminent round two, do we?"

"Do we buggery, no," he agrees. "I notice you seemed to follow the lingo about the corporations fairly well, you've done this sort of thing before?"

"I was an admitted solicitor for a time while I was still mortal, while it wasn't my specialty I had to at least learn it to qualify. Anyway, if it helps your peace of mind, he didn't have an account here to the best of my knowledge. There's a password-locked vault at Gringotts that I mean to clean out, but I suspect it's not much more than walking-around money. The big one is the numbered account in Zurich where he's been dumping his ill-gotten gains since the late forties, which I should be able to clear out over the next few months. I don't have any exact numbers, but I suspect it's going to be a quite eye-watering amount."

"You have the codes? We can handle that for you."

"I do, and I'm a bit loath to let you do it, to be honest. If you do it from here it'll make a trail back to you and, possibly, me: while I don't doubt you have defences, he's a fairly potent threat. I _was_ going to establish a throwaway identity and get a bank draft made out to cash."

Rhys's grin is entirely predatory. "You may have heard of our concierge service?"

"Famed in song and story, yes. I'm reluctant to expose them to risk, though. I'm assuming they're staffed by nonmagicals?"

"Most of them. The magical ones, who are a big part of the reputation of that department, are exactly the kind of people your man wanted done away with. I'm pretty sure they can cover their tracks well enough to fool a pureblood -"

I hold a hand up. "He isn't. A pureblood, that is. Halfblood, raised in a muggle orphanage in the late twenties, early thirties. Went to Hogwarts thinking he was muggleborn, got sorted into Slytherin."

Rhys winces. Even before all of the shit Tom stirred up it was not a recipe for a happy seven years to be a muggleborn in Slytherin. "And he took up their cause _anyway?"_

"A few of the deaths among the purebloods were revenge for games of 'bogwash the mudblood', I should imagine." I'd be very surprised if this wasn't the case. I've got his memories of swearing bloody vengeance, after all, even if I've not gone looking for the consummations thereof. "As to his motives, your guess is as good as anyone's. My point is that if we're going to ask your people to do this, it should be in full knowledge of the risks. Do I think a kid brought up on the parish between the wars is going to know finance like you or I do? No. But he's got a head start compared to most purebloods in that he knows there's more to money than shiny coins, so he _might_ have educated himself."

"I know my colleagues, Mr. Reynolds. They'll _relish_ the risk."

I snort. "Try an' restrain yourself from breaking into 'Men of Harlech' on their behalf, ey? Let me know what they say? With full knowledge of the risk."

There's laughter in his eyes as he looks me dead in the eye. "Welshmen do not yield," he says.

"Back to it, though. There's the cash right now, there's the swiss account, and there's a whole portfolio of assets I can get my hands on as sort-of prize of war, about which ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. I _could_ just take it, but with the bugger still in the wind I'm going to need to indulge in some sharp practise to cover my tracks." Which is to say twenty-first century standards of money-laundering augmented with mind-control magic and memory modification. Can't prevent Tom from knowing he's been robbed hollow, but I _can_ leave him with no obvious target for revenge, apart from the disgrace to the legal profession who's been taking care of the estate for forty years without asking what should have been some fairly obvious questions.

"I quite understand. I'll make sure the paperwork shows that we've done proper due diligence and found nothing untoward. I'd suggest liquidating everything?" It's an obvious point, he's framing it as a question to avoid calling me a total idiot to my face.

"My plan exactly. There are a couple of assets I want to leave in place so he doesn't notice immediately, he's got a bolt-hole up north that I want him to use because I have tactical plans for it," although 'plans' is an overstatement of my mere desire to know where his bolt-hole is should he come back - "and I'm going to have to leave him enough productive assets to keep up the maintenance on it accordingly. The rest is going to become a series of bankers' drafts that will be making their way here over the next couple of years."

"Anything else? You mentioned Mr. Vernon having care of a young wizard? Anything we can do for him?"

I consider the matter for a moment. Of course Rhys is looking for extra business. Very much his job. The question is whether to let him in on the gag. The obvious marker for trusting this chap is how far out of the mainstream wizarding world he is: muggleborn, working in the muggle economy, and very definitely outwith the Death Eater recruitment pool. The clincher, though, is that he's City of London Financial Services. I may have moved away as my career progressed, but by original training he's part of my own personal professional tribe. He is, in short, People Like Me. And I have been quietly fuming over the arrant stupidity of leaving Harry's entire worldly wealth in a hole in the ground. Decision made, I say, "He's an interesting case. He's got a vault at Gringotts, contents unknown to me, that the individual who dumped him on his aunt and uncle didn't see fit to mention. The vault key is presumably in said individual's hands, we don't know what's been done with it or the money."

Rhys sucks air through his teeth. "Doesn't _sound_ good."

"Especially not when you consider that we're talking about Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore."

"What."

"I don't know what story he's been giving out, but Dumbledore left the poor mite on his aunt's doorstep overnight with a note and no further explanation, it's a wonder he didn't get adopted by the milkman. I've been able to figure out a bit more because, well, disembodied spirit. I have an inbuilt advantage when it comes to finding things out, even if I can't always get _everything_."

"If you've got formal guardianship papers - I presume in Mr. Vernon's name - Gringotts will transfer the account to us on your instruction. We won't be able to do anything about any jiggery-pokery before the date of transfer, but it will shut any misfeasance right down." Rhys is frowning. It's pretty clear he's not saying everything he knows or suspects about this, and probably won't even if pushed.

Rhys's attitude to Dumbledore is interesting, to say the least. "I notice you don't immediately discount the idea that Dumbledore would do any such thing."

"I also don't immediately assume he would, either, look you. He's a man, same as any other. He's a good man relative to the rest of the wizarding world, but that's no high bar to be clearing, is it? He's a big man for the politics, and that costs money. Would he succumb to temptation? I don't know, but why risk it if we've an alternative?"

"Take your point. I've my own reasons for doubting his fitness for public office, but I've not seen anything to suggest he's a common thief either. Still, as you say, taking temptation out of his way is the right thing to do, and having that money earning interest is the right thing to do for Harry. There's not going to be any will or trust deed to cover it, I'm afraid. If the Potters had a will, it's on the wizarding side."

Rhys waves it off. "That's not such a problem. Our trustee department will take over seamlessly if you've got a court order covering the guardianship. Mention Coutts to pretty much any judge and they'll be happy with it."

"Well, the formal guardianship should go through shortly. We're just waiting for a court date and I can't see it not going through basically on the nod. If I could have a note of your trustee people's willingness to act I can instruct my solicitor to get the judge's sign-off as part of the final order."

"That should do nicely."

I've had a thought niggling at the back of my mind. "You mentioned having alchemists, plural, on your books?"

"I did. If you're asking what I think you're asking, the lead-into-gold thing is rather a myth, with most of them it's just centuries of compound interest." It doesn't surprise me that there are more alchemists around than the Flamels: it's a discipline with over two millennia of documented history and some decidedly famous names attached to it. That the utterly parochial wizarding world would assume that the one they knew about was the only one at all is of a piece with their overall character.

"Not what I was after. I mentioned trying to find a way to get a new body so I don't have to borrow Vernon here, and being able to consult an alchemist who's read in on modern biochemistry and genetics would be a great help. I'm after magical methods of growing clone bodies from DNA samples. Even if only to tell me that what I'm thinking is impossible, it'll help to rule it out. If you can effect an introduction?"

"It can't hurt to ask, and most of the alchemists I'm personally acquainted with have telephones. Obviously I can promise nothing and confidentiality forbids me reporting back, mind, but between ourselves most of them would take the bit right between their teeth at the prospect of an interesting problem to solve. If I mention it to more than one of them, why, there may even be a fight."

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

The bit in the disclaimer: if you copy out everything Dumbledore says and does on those two subjects, as well as a few things he does in relation to them, you should, as I did, see that they don't actually all match up, and in a few places the things he _says_ flatly contradict the things he _does_. We know the protection on Harry's own person is real and defeatable - it works against Voldemort until he counteracts it. The solution I've come up with here allows there to be real protections on Number Four that don't amount to just a great big bluff that Voldemort buys right up to Deathly Hallows _even though he counteracted Harry's blood protection in Goblet of Fire_. What that protection spell _is_ is a matter for later in the story, of course.

The _Wonderful Discouerie_ is a contemporary account, by one of the court clerks, of the trial of the Lancashire Witches in 1612. There's a few places where the tale is obvious embroidered but it's a primary source and considered reliable. Google 'Pendle Witches' or 'Lancashire witches' for the history.

The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. Based very loosely on welsh legend and myth (and a few bits of history), they're a brilliant read for kids. And, yes, there's a horcrux in them, which is as much of a spoiler as I'll give you.

All of the stuff about shell companies and money laundering? What I've alluded to wouldn't work nowadays. Wouldn't work even a few years later than depicted but it's accurate for the period and I'm not going to put _genuine _money-laundering methods in a fanfic. (I know how to do it because I was professionally required to be able to spot and report it. And in order to fight the dark arts, first you must _know_ the dark arts...)

As for Coutts, if you think they're a bit on the accepting side as regards accepting fairly shady customers - as Mal undoubtedly is - they actually got fined for exactly that a few years ago. (They're nothing special in that regard, most of the major banks have been done for money laundering at one point or another) In any event "I'm ripping off the Dark Lord who considers you all blood traitors for working alongside muggles" would go a long way toward soothing any limited qualms they may have had, especially in the more 'relaxed' atmosphere of pre-90s financial services.

Fanfic recommendation: What's Her Name In Hufflepuff by ashez2ashes, only on FFN as far as I know. The tone of that story did a _lot_ to influence this one.


	12. Better Living Through Alchemy

DISCLAIMER: Does the wizarding world only know about one alchemist and assume his wife isn't also an alchemist, despite alchemy being a thing the world over for two thousand years with one of the most famous ones being a woman? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

_Chapter 12_

"_Not what I was after. I mentioned trying to find a way to get a new body so I don't have to borrow Vernon here, and being able to consult an alchemist who's read in on modern biochemistry and genetics would be a great help. I'm after magical methods of growing clone bodies from DNA samples. Even if only to tell me that what I'm thinking is impossible, it'll help to rule it out. If you can effect an introduction?"_

"_It can't hurt to ask, and most of the alchemists I'm personally acquainted with have telephones. Obviously I can promise nothing and confidentiality forbids me reporting back, mind, but between ourselves most of them would take the bit right between their teeth at the prospect of an interesting problem to solve. If I mention it to more than one of them, why, there may even be a fight."_

_-oOo-_

Two weeks of telephone calls back and forth about Tom's numbered swiss account and we've got a plan I'm ethically comfortable with. Not as to stealing all of Tom's money - there's a war on, and looting enemy supplies is my actual _duty_ in this context - but as to involving bank employees, who don't have a honking great big Mystery Defensive Spell to hide behind. Huw - we're on first name terms after about a week - reassures me repeatedly that everyone who's taking part is a volunteer, fully aware of the risks, and would be targets in the event of Voldemort II: Return Of The Arsehole anyway. Muggleborns and halfbloods who choose to live away from the wizarding world: very much persona non grata in the Coming Pureblood World Order.

He gives me the nutshell version of the scheme they've come up with. It's going to cost nearly twenty per cent off the top - not that I care, it's Tom's money - to use a combination of wire transfers, bankers' drafts walked from one bank to another and some jiggery-pokery with shell corporations created especially for the purpose. The money's going to pass through several dozen sets of hands and be beyond tracing by all but the toppest of top-flight forensic accountants.

He also comes up with the _frankly brilliant_ idea of having the real property, stocks, shares and bonds liquidated by their current managers and the funds put into the swiss account Tom has been using all along to accumulate the proceeds. Thus laundering his money through his own account, and looking a lot less suspicious to the mundane authorities. Big investors and landholders cash out all the time after all. The fact that it adds insult to injury is _totally not a factor_. Honest.

I give him the go-ahead, and sign a wad of blank stationery with Tom's signature to allow his team to forge all of the bank instructions they're going to need. Ethically flexible bankers: I know I take the mickey out of them at every available opportunity, but _damn_ they're coming in handy right now. I mean, technically what they're doing could and should get them all fired, but the chance to stick it to Tom is all kinds of motivating. It's like giving a lot of 1930s jews the chance to burgle Himmler: all kinds of moral and legal objections get treated as minor talking points, if that.

I also send instructions to Tom's lawyers to start liquidating his assets, giving a new post office box number to write back to. They write back asking for the client meeting I was expecting, and that goes swimmingly as I convince Tom's solicitor - I am abusing the _fuck_ out of Tom's Jedi mind-trick skills - that the fat bloke in his office looks exactly like Tom. His mind will replace memories of me with memories of the few meetings he's had with Tom, and I scramble the receptionist's memory of my appearance on the way out: a moment's effort and she's slightly surprised to recognise Jimmy Savile coming out of her boss's office. While I can't think of a likely way to get _that_ fucker put in his proper place just yet, painting a target on him for a murderous undead lunatic will do until I come up with something. I leave Tom with the house at Little Hangleton and just enough bonds to pay the maintenance and the rates on the property for the next ten years.

Assuming we can put Tom permanently in the ground - hopefully in a more organised and tidy manner than they managed in the books - I'll go back in with instructions to sell the Little Hangleton house to me and put the proceeds in the swiss account, whence I'll straight up steal it back. I grew up quite near there, and if I can manage to get corporeal again I'm going to want a house.

I don't expect to hear anything for a while - between the set up and the execution, it's apt to be a big job - so I break the news to Petunia. Including the number that I'm likely to be worth when it's all finished.

"HOW MUCH?" is her first response.

"Calm down, Petunia, the boys are trying to sleep. Also, the neighbours don't need to hear."

"We won't get in trouble, will we?"

"Pretty much impossible. It's not like he can go to the police, now, is it? Excuse me constable, but some thieving git has emptied my numbered swiss bank account that I'm not really supposed to have, taking all of the proceeds of my crimes, and I didn't notice because I was dead at the time."

"Well, when you put it like that, no."

"He'll get even shorter shrift from the wizard police, too, probably involving explosive spells and cursed fire. Tom rather outplayed himself by trying to do the International Man Of Mystery thing with anonymous banking and safe deposits to store everything he stole off his victims. If he'd stuck with regular banking and investment there'd be far more oversight and scrutiny and I'd never get away with this at all."

"Well, it's no crime to rob a thief, I suppose. And all this is in your name, not Vernon's?" Petunia gets to the heart of the matter, of course. She's rightly worried about comeback. As am I: while I'm confident that the Great Big Defensive Spell will work to keep Tom from tracing anything to Little Whinging, or at least doing anything about it if he manages, if he's still alive when Harry turns seventeen and I haven't managed to undo that link Dumbledore created then we'll be dealing with a Tom who's even angrier than the standard-issue version.

"Not even that. I'm going to be owning most of it through a series of offshore company accounts that are very difficult to trace back to _any_ real person's identity, let alone mine. Once I've got it all properly untraceable I was thinking of setting up an endowment for Dudley to cover his time at university and help him get a start, student grants are going to stop being a thing in a few years so he'll need it." Vernon gets the warm fuzzies at that suggestion, and Petunia, improved though she is over the last six months, simmers down considerably by the simple expedient of being bribed this way. Harry's got what he inherited from his father, of course, which I might give a little boost to, it depends very much on how much is in his vault. In the books, it looked like a lot to an eleven-year-old seeing the wizarding world for the first time, but it's in Galleons, which I don't trust any further than I can throw, say, Dudley.

"Everyone's talking about how nice it was that you did the Father Christmas thing, you know." An abrupt subject change, but I can see the connection, we're talking about presents for Dudley after all. I've been talking about giving gifts, after all. "I was getting my hair done today and it came up. They'd had Miss Coonan from the school in over the weekend, apparently her highlights had had a bad reaction and turned her hair blue of all things, and she told them what you did."

"Blue hair, you say?" I ask, noting to myself that it's hair rather than a wig, and apparently nobody has actually blamed Harry for it, "tell me, did Harry or Dudley come home complaining about her being unfair to either of them last week?"

"Well, yes, why?"

"Was it Harry or Dudley?"

"Both. Apparently Harry was helping Dudley, you know what they're like, and Miss Coonan told them off because Dudley's supposed to be working on his own. Dudley got upset about it and she made him stand in the corner. Naturally, I backed up the teacher, Dudley isn't always going to have Harry to help him with his schoolwork and that they should be polite and calm about things like that." I bite down _hard_ on the sarcastic retort to that: if it wasn't for me forcing the issue Dudley wouldn't have any help at all and would be acting up because he was struggling.

"Well, it doesn't look like Harry was calm on the day," I say once the urge to be mean about it has passed.

"You don't think -?"

"What, Harry thinks Dudley's being punished unfairly, he also thinks it's unfair he's not allowed to help, and right afterward the teacher suffers a minor, slightly embarrassing misfortune? Two and two very definitely make four if you know about magic," I say.

"What can we do?"

"I'll have a word with him. Accidental magic is, by all accounts, inevitable. We can at least give him some guidance on not getting angry at people who are just doing their jobs."

I take Harry aside the next morning before I leave, and sit him down on the sofa. "I've got some good news and some bad news, Harry," I say. "The good news is that you've almost certainly got magic like your mummy and daddy."

"Oh!" and then a frown. "What's the bad news?"

"We think you might have done some magic by accident and upset someone."

"Oh no! I'm sorry!"

"Well, you won't be able to say you're sorry to Miss Coonan, because she doesn't know about magic. She thinks she was just unlucky. _We_ know that you got angry and you had an accident with your magic and her poor hair turned blue."

"Oh, no!" Harry's eyes are welling up. I snatch the box of kleenex off the coffee table and hand it to him.

"Don't get upset, now, Harry, it was an accident and you know I don't get angry about little boys having accidents." I'd never be bloody stopping with Dudley, that's for sure. Boy's straight-up clumsy, and while we're still waiting on a dyslexia test appointment as far as I can tell dyspraxia isn't even a recognised thing yet. Although they do go together quite often. " I expect you to get things wrong from time to time and it's my job to teach you to do better."

"'kay," he sniffles, visibly trying to hold it together.

"Now, the important thing is that you should try not to get angry at people who are just trying to do their jobs, okay?"

"'kay."

"Miss Coonan wants to see that Dudley can read on his own. We already know he can read with you helping him, you do it at home all the time." Less than half a school year and Harry's further along than Dudley even with a year's head start. Petunia may not like it, but Dudley needs _help_: Harry's bright and eager and thriving now he's got some support in his life, but he's not any kind of prodigy, just on the bright side of normal. "So, don't get upset at Miss Coonan - or anyone - if they're just doing their job. If you don't understand when they tell you to do something, ask why. They might not have time to tell you, and you might still not understand even if they do, but it's better than getting angry, isn't it?"

"'es." Harry's mortified at not having been a Good Boy, even by accident.

"And, going forward, see if when you're helping Dudley you can think of a way to help him read by himself, okay?"

After a round of hugs and forgiveness and promises to do better, I leave for work.

-oOo-

Weeks pass: everything goes silent from the banking side of things, although I get fortnightly reports from Tom's solicitor on the progress of liquidating his assets. (Blatant bill-padding, but I let it slide. Not really my money, after all.) Tom had investments and rental properties sufficient to generate an annual income of over two hundred grand and I'm taking about ninety per cent of it off him. It's not actually a lot compared to what was in Switzerland: _that_ was nearly forty years of compound interest on all of the income from these assets just socked away and left alone and I'm going to be a multi-millionaire by the end of the next tax year, but it takes it away from Tom and that's what matters.

I decide that the books hidden in Little Hangleton are worth a certain amount of risk - considerably less than assimilating Tom's memories of them, that's for sure - so I make a trip to Diagon Alley to get another lockbox: this one's going in the attic with all the dangerous stuff in, the cursed artefacts I can't unload on Gringotts (cursebreaker practice if nothing else) and cursed books I don't want where the boys can get at them. Tom learned the right runic spells to keep shit like this contained while he was apprenticed to Borgin & Burke, so it'll be an afternoon's work with carving chisel, brush and paint to modify the box.

While I'm there, with said strongbox under my arm because I'm about to have a heavy load to carry, I pop in to Gringotts to have at Tom's password-locked vault. A bit over ten thousand galleons later, leaving enough to pay the vault fees for ten years or so - they notify customers when the vault closes for lack of funds, and I don't want him to know he's been robbed until he actually goes in - I have to choke down the urge to leave a cheeky note. I _could_ pay the money straight into my Coutts account from the tellers' counter, but that would be rather more traceable. As it is, I'm taking a bit of a risk by showing Vernon's face while doing this, but Tom's going to assume polyjuice before he jumps to the conclusion of a parselmouth muggle, and having cashed cheques with Gringotts at least some of them know me as Malcolm Reynolds now anyway.

A visit to Little Hangleton (a trip down memory lane: I've hiked every fell, moor and hill within sight of the place, Crosby Ravensworth being the nearest town I remember from my own universe, although it's called Crosby Ravensclough here) and a bit of mild jedi mind-trickery on Frank Bryce - who I'd completely forgotten about until he challenged me on the grounds of the house - gets me the contents of the parseltongue-passworded safe at the back of the wine cellar of the old Riddle place. Mostly it's books and a stash of tools and cursed objects. Not much of it has intrinsic value, and what little does is a drop in the bucket next to what I'm already stealing.

I make a note to get Frank packed off to sheltered housing with an annuity (which is cheap: disabled septuagenarians don't tend to live long) to supplement his state and war disability pensions: he's nearly seventy and barely keeping up with the work. It would actually be cheaper to have a gardening and maintenance service pop in every few weeks anyway and the results would probably be slightly better. Was Tom keeping a victim handy in case he needed one? I have no idea, but I'm not leaving the poor man in the line of fire if I don't have to. A letter to Tom's solicitor takes care of the matter. A few weeks later I laugh when I see the name of the place Frank has picked, it's right around the corner from where my old self will be living in about thirty years' time.

One of the books is the source of the ritual Tom used in the graveyard, which is a relief. I don't have to go digging in his memories and pick up all of the disgusting shit he got into while finding it. It's actually a text on alchemy as it pertains to the Dark Arts - used here in its sense of 'disgusting transgressive magic for wizards with personality disorders' rather than any of the other senses in which the term is used. There's a great long section on the creation of alchemical homunculi and how to make the process work with dark magic.

Which is entirely fucking ridiculous. The alchemists were trying to create life and in the process figure out how life was created. The version in my old world was generally wrong-headed - there was a widespread belief that sperm contained tiny people that grew to full size if they got into a womb, for instance - but they were at least trying. They would, eventually, exhaust all the wrong approaches and figure out the right one. In the middle of the 19th century, as it happens: scientific progress is not always uniform or, for that matter, in the right direction.

What the alchemists were trying to do in _this_ universe I have no idea. It's not generally in books you can buy, you have to have reading privileges at a university library to get most of it because 'history of failed attempts at science by pre-enlightenment chaps with decidedly odd ideas' is too niche a market for most bookshops. That changes with the advent of the internet and collections getting digitised and made available online of course, but here in the eighties? That shit is _obscure_.

Tom's book - there's no title on the cover, and the bookplate just says '_ex libris Baronis de Retz'_ which, you know, figures - sort of assumes that you know enough alchemy to understand that side of it and only explains the dark arts portion. Between that and the translation fuzz between my classical latin and what I _think_ is early medieval latin, I'm not getting a lot out of it. Although I _do_ get the bit that explains the blood, flesh and bone part of the magic, in which the author of the spell appears to have gone out of his way to be as entirely fucking awful as possible. It's meant to guide the development of the homunculus into an adult body in as manly and dominant a form as possible, as envisioned by someone for whom mere toxic masculinity might as well have been prancing about in a frilly blouse with a handbag full of glitter. It makes me want to devise a spell to cross the barriers of time and punch someone in the dick six hundred years ago. The arithmancy of it is, however, finite and computable and since I already have the appropriate references I should be able to figure out alternatives that _ought _to work and aren't even slightly repugnant. Not least because I can handle any necessary macho posturing on my _own_ merits, thank you very much.

The conclusion I reach is that maybe making a homunculus and guiding its development into a useful human body is possible using someone's genome as a template - Harry would be entirely pleased to donate a cheek-swab, I'm sure, since it would mean he had an actual brother to go with the magic ghost daddy - but the devil is in a massive pile of details. Foetal and infant development is the result of a couple of billion years of evolution, after all, it's unlikely to be a trivial job even with magic.

Giving up right at the start is the greatest failure possible, though, so after a few sessions of browsing the publicly-accessible bits of the University of Reading's library - mind-trick again, I don't have reader's privileges here at all but I need less supervision than the undergraduates so it's not like it's an imposition - I give a telephone sales clerk at Blackwells a red-letter sales day and acquire a shelf of books on biochemistry, genetics and developmental biology. Working through them - I've gone for undergraduate stuff, even though I really don't have the right A-levels to easily grok what I'm reading - is a major chore, sufficient that doing the reading-all-night-in-spirit-form thing isn't actually much worse and I decide to just suck it up in the interest of making faster progress. I'm able to sketch out a vague plan, but if I can't find a way to make magic handle the nitty-gritty I'm going to be proper _fucked_.

So I'm kind of relieved when I get a telephone call on a Saturday morning in late March. I'd been helping the boys with their 'homework' on the Easter Story when Petunia yells that it's for me.

"Hello?"

"This, ah, Malcolm Reynolds?"

"Speaking. Who's calling?"

"Hartlib. Young Rhys gave me this number, said you wanted to talk about a problem in biochemistry." _Translation: I can't talk about alchemy over the phone._ Because I _do_ recognise that name.

"That's right, yes. Tell me, any relation to Samuel Hartlib?" Hartlib is about half the reason I know about early modern alchemy: he turns up a lot in Pepys's diaries - they were neighbours - and his archive of correspondence was found in the sixties, giving historians a detailed look at the founding era of the modern scientific community. Fascinating stuff.

"Closest possible, he's me. Assume you know me from Pepys's scribblings." Hartlib's telephone manner is brusque and to the point, with over-enunciated diction. If he really is _the_ Samuel Hartlib, he predates the telephone by about three centuries and probably picked up his habits with the thing when it was all crackly party lines and human operators.

"That and your correspondence archive turned up and got the University of Sheffield all in a tizzy with the history of science in it. I was rather hoping we could meet and I could show you how far I've got with my own efforts. If nothing else, whether the approach I have in mind is likely to bear fruit." I'm _that_ near the beginning of it all: I have no idea if I'm even on the right track. Alchemy, however, is famous for making homunculi so I have high hopes of at least getting an overview of the prior art to my problem.

"Yes. Rhys's description of your problem sounded intriguing. Got your diary handy?"

We hit on a date in the following week and I tell him I'll book a catered conference room somewhere - he tells me he's happy with anywhere in England, and gives me his number at Imperial College. Leaving aside the difficulties of having a discussion of fairly abstruse science, alchemy and magic in a house with two rambunctious little boys in residence, I'm aware that Number Four is being watched. While Nicolas Flamel is the only alchemist famous in the wizarding world - assuming chocolate frog cards are to be trusted - if Mrs. Figg reports unusual visitors it'll trigger follow-up and if any wizard knows that there are other alchemists and what they look like, it's Dumbledore.

Hartlib turns up - I end up booking a conference suite at a hotel in Guildford that I'm pretty sure was called something different when I lived there - accompanied by a woman who could be from anywhere from Iberia to Istanbul: Dark hair and eyes, strong features, robust-looking but she carries it well. Hartlib, for his part, looks like about every other farmer from the countryside where I grew up, only half a head shorter than average. Round-faced, big-nosed, with salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes and a chunky outdoorsman's frame that looks like he ought to have a pair of collies at his heels. I'd been expecting someone a bit more teutonic-looking, frankly. They're both in completely unremarkable, if slightly dated, suits, hers a skirt rather than a trouser-suit. The impression they give is of academics in their prime: both look about fifty or so. Although _she_ could as easily pass for senior counsel, there's a certain sharpness in her manner that I'm used to seeing from lady QCs.

Hartlib is first to step up, extending his hand for a shake. "Reynolds? Good. Allow me to introduce Perenelle Flamel, as she's calling herself these days."

She laughs at him. "Six centuries, boy. You've only been Samuel since, what, sixteen hundred?"

He's smiling, of course. Clearly these two get on famously, which they'd surely have to if they've known each other for literal centuries and can still stand the sight of each other. I've noticed that they're implying to have known each other longer than Samual Hartlib's official dates would allow. I decide not to ask about that, nor why Nicolas isn't along.

"The _famous_ Perenelle Flamel, I presume?" choking down my urge to get all fanboy on _either_ of them.

"I've managed to avoid being famous outside of being married to Nicolas for quite a long while, now," she says, avoiding all but the barest essence of my question. Which, fair's fair, _was_ a bit prying, "Samuel asked me to come along because I've been funding biotech startups for the last little while."

_That_ is interesting. Although I suppose it makes sense for someone with centuries of accumulated wealth to try and direct research where she wants it to go, and Venture Capitalism is as good a method as any and better than most. It also gives me an idea: it's going to require a leap of faith that these two are who they say they are. Rhys having vouched for Hartlib and Hartlib vouching for Flamel will, I think, do. Their minds are sufficiently occluded I can barely tell they're there: it's like conversations I had in my old life with no magic involved at all. Acquiring allies is _important_ for what's to come, and these two are like the folks at Coutts: peripheral to the wizarding world at their closest, and therefore relatively safe to cultivate. And, being centuries old, unlikely to fall for any kind of misdirection or obfuscation I might try, along with being open-minded enough to keep their heads above water despite the world changing out of all recognition around them. The implications of their longevity for what their inner lives must me like are _fascinating._

"Oh, _good_," I say, after a moment to think of an approach, "that's going to pay off _enormously_. Especially when the Human Genome Project gets going. I shan't be surprised to learn you're going to have a hand in that."

They look at each other. Very _speaking_ looks, and I shouldn't be surprised if there was some legilimentic communication going on. It's an often-overlooked aspect of the discipline, since it requires both parties to the conversation to know each other very well.

Flamel looks at me with a searching and suspicious eye, "How do you know about that? The first meetings were only last year, and it hasn't been publicised at all."

"Bluntly, I'm from the future. Take a seat, there's coffee and tea, and I'll tell you the tale."

It takes me an hour to cover the basics. Neither of them is taking notes, but neither strikes me as the sort that needs to, very much. I give them the whole thing: parallel universes in which there's no magic and they're historical figures only and magic isn't real, the possibilities vis a vis fiction leaking from one universe to another, time travel, disembodiment, _possible_ interaction with personifications of fate itself, and the extent of my future knowledge. Up to 2019 in the real world and up to 1998 in the magical.

"Questions?" I conclude.

"Are you willing to consult for me?" are the first words out of Flamel's mouth. As a venture capitalist, future knowledge is going to be immensely valuable to her. Which is a happy accident, because I was a bit stumped for how I could foot the bill if they insisted on treating me as a paying customer.

I smile. "I don't have a scale of charges, but if you can point me toward getting a pensieve made for me - I only need an introduction to a maker, I'm fairly well-funded - I'm quite happy to work on a quid pro quo basis for help on my own project."

"Ha!" Hartlib's amused by my response. "Largely the way we do business among ourselves, you'll fit right in. How far have you got?"

I feel a little giddy. It sounds very much like they're willing to help, in return for things that are entirely within my capabilities. I give them a presentation on the developmental biology I want to magically induce - very light on details, I've only been working on this a matter of weeks - and my thoughts on non-transgressive alternatives for the ritual in the de Retz book. I cheerfully admit that there remain some enormous blank spots in my plan, and the bits that _are_ filled in are based on a very first-reading understanding of the magical theory and arithmancy involved.

It quickly devolves into a four-hour tutorial - interrupted with lunch in the hotel restaurant, so we're there until dinnertime - on homunculi and the alchemy of life and its relation to magic in general, transfiguration in particular, and biochemistry. My glee at this development simply _cannot_ be overstated: even on the official dates there's nearly a millennium of alchemical experience in the room with me, and both of them are in teaching mode.

The conclusion: it's entirely possible, almost certainly completely unmarketable - an eye for the commercial applications is apparently important for alchemists, it's what pays for the research at the price of the pesky lead-into-gold rumours - and _probably_ won't be any use to anyone but me. That last _probably_ is heavily qualified: neither of them have ever specialised in an appropriate field but they assure me they Know People who will consult purely out of academic interest. Apparently growing homunculus clones for transplant-organ purposes doesn't occur to them, and I'm not going to mention it until I know where their squick limits are.

They're also quite interested in my theory that transfiguring matter from one allotrope to another should be quite simple with a bit of practise so the diamond reaction vessel that the optimised arithmancy calls for moves from the 'impossible' to the 'tricky, but doable' category. They're _highly_ amused to learn it's an idea I nicked from sci-fi novels that won't come out for ten years or so, with transfiguration standing in for nanotechnology. Between them they know half a dozen better methods for turning foodstuffs into nutrient soup for the reaction vessel than the potions-and-transfiguration method I'd sketched out.

At one point I even leave Vernon taking a short nap and float out to allow them to cast analytical spells - Flamel's magic is all plangent strings while Hartlib's sounds more like a brass section that needs to switch to decaff - that tell them I'm, while not unique, definitely unusual. I'm certainly not a ghost as it's understood by wizards, and while spirits like me _are_ known, they've never been known to remember any kind of life as a mortal. It _could_ be that they started off like me and just eventually forgot who they were, but none of us can think of a practical way of testing any of it.

Over dinner, Flamel asks me, "Why _you_, do you think?"

I have to shrug, pretty much. "Well, let's assume that that experience after I died was genuine. We're dealing with entities that simply aren't human, so what their standards are for an appropriate agent to manifest their will may not be comprehensible to us. If it _wasn't_ genuine, of course, then this is all a wildly improbable set of coincidences - I might not even _be_ the original Mal despite having psychological continuity with him -" Philosophy of Mind and Identity is fun like that, there's a _reason_ a lot of philosophy undergraduates go a bit _odd_ by the end of their second year until they get over it - "and all I can do is the most right I can under the limits I'm working with."

"Which includes possessing a man and pillaging a Dark Lord's bank account?" Hartlib's amused tone suggests that a man who lived through the Thirty Years War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms might know a thing or two about situational ethics.

"Just so," I say. "Look, if I could have gone back in time and done something about Hitler, I would have. Germany would still have been a shit mess, but I think it _might_ have been possible to make it not a _genocidal warmongering_ shit mess. Would I have made some ethical compromises to achieve that? Of course I would, within the ethical limits I'm _not_ prepared to break, but then strangling art students in their sleep is illegal no matter _how_ much of a racist arsehole they are. I'm under no illusions that I'm some mighty hero here to save the world from a dreadful villain who threatens everybody -"

"- he doesn't," Flamel observes, and she's been around long enough to see a few Dark Lords come and go, so she should probably know.

"But when it comes to a choice between helping a child who's been set up for a life of being shit on and pondering the second- and third- order consequences for possible ethical issues, I'm not minded to take much time over it. Sure, Tom almost certainly isn't an existential threat, the history books are full of his sort and they never come to good ends, but with advance warning of how things would play out un-meddled-with it should be possible to mitigate the damage considerably. Some carefully-managed inconvenience for a couple of reprehensible idiots - which they're benefiting by, in the long run - and looting the stores of the principal villain? I shan't lose any sleep, frankly."

Hartlib's nodding agreement, while Flamel's giving me a look I can't identify. She's at least six and a half centuries old, of course, so my chances of figuring out what she's thinking are pretty slim.

Hartlib waves for a waiter. "Dessert, anyone?"

I've had Vernon on his feet all day, so I decide he can have something and nod my assent.

"The thing is," Hartlib says once we've ordered sweets, "we can't take much time away from our regular work, we're in the business of saving millions at a time, after all."

This is true. Hartlib told me over appetizers that he's currently part of the effort to eliminate rinderpest, and was pleased to hear that it was completely gone by 2019. That _will_ save millions while improving the quality of life of hundreds of millions more.

"So," he goes on, "while your effort to save a few thousands is a worthy one and we _will_ help, delaying our own projects to get involved full-time will cost a lot more lives in the long run. And once you're done, I'd like you to think about joining the Invisible College. You've got a head start in as much as you're probably already immortal, no need for bizarre accidents or decades of magical training or spending half your time repairing yourself. Get your science up to speed and if nothing else you can work with the likes of Perenelle here organising things even if you can't do original work in the lab. You can pick up the magic and alchemy as you go along, but from what Rhys says you're fairly far along on the financial side of things already."

I'm a bit blown away by that. I'd already confirmed with them that the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone were red herrings made up by people writing _about_ alchemy rather than alchemists themselves, and didn't think it was appropriate to ask for the Grand Secret Of Immortality at a first meeting. To learn that there _is_ no Grand Secret and at least some of them just lucked into it is quite the revelation, and is dwarfed by the realisation - I literally hadn't considered it - that having died once I've got it out of the way and should be thinking about a career for the centuries ahead.

Urk.

-oOo-

After a short break from everything due to the boys being off for Easter - days out and activities to fill the lengthening evenings, as well as working our way through the educational toys that Dudley never bothered with but now enjoys because they get him a lot more interaction with what he thinks is his father - I get back to it.

First order of business is to catch up with my correspondence on the looting and money-laundering fronts. Which I'm privately acknowledging they are, for all the nodding and winking that goes on about where the money's coming from. By the time serious anti-laundering measures come in in about ten years' time I'll look like an entirely respectable capitalist. I'm pretty sure that the scandalous case that prompted that legislation has only just happened, although I can't remember anything about it except that it involved the proceeds of making a whopping quantity of LSD.

I amend the instructions I've given to the bank to leave a reasonable sum in the Swiss account to go with the assets I've left in the hands of Tom's lawyers. Unless he specifically asks for a statement, he won't know how much is missing, and I don't want him to think of doing that purely because he's tried to draw money out and had the order, cheque or whatever bounce.

While that's going on I end up in a blistering correspondence with what surely must be most of the world's alchemists. They've got quite the network going and word of what I'm putting together turns out to be an amusing hour or so's diversion for most of them. I get reams and reams of advice, notes, book recommendations and reading lists: what I thought would be a couple of years' work starts to look manageable in months, and then I'm able to revise it down to _weeks_. If I had an actually corporeal head, it'd be bursting with the influx of information. The only way I'm able to keep up - the notes of thanks alone are a demanding job of work - is by buying an electric typewriter, fitting runic silencing spells to the case with big messy blobs of sealing wax, and poltergeisting my way through bread-and-butter letters and questions about what I've received while incorporeal in the wee small hours of the morning.

This is also the time I reserve for having massive attacks of rampant fanboyism. I got a critique of my arithmancy from ISAAC FUCKING NEWTON. Who isn't dead, he just retired from public life. The rest of my correspondence consists of slightly more esoteric names, but still notable. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't hear from Paracelsus or Boyle, who I'm given to understand are still knocking about the scientific community under assumed names.

Petunia raises a quite reasonable objection to the full conversion of the garage into a magical workroom. Purifying and marking it out as a ritual space is one thing - I can cover things up with tarpaulins when they're just painted on the floor and walls - but the accumulating bookcases and crates of magical equipment are kind of obvious any time I leave the door open. Which I have to do several times as the paint fumes and ritual incense can get a bit overpowering at times during the preparation stages.

The solution is one that anyone can buy on Diagon Alley: a magical tent. Basic models contain the floor plan of a modest bungalow. They're still expensive, as putting extension charms on the inside of a tent is highly skilled work and the enchanters who do it charge accordingly. Even at the ridiculous Galleon exchange rate you're not getting any change out of five hundred quid, which is silly money at 1985 prices. However, if two _thousand_ galleons, ten grand in real money, doesn't give you sticker shock - to which I'm immune, because it's all stolen money anyway - then you can get a tent superficially identical to the cheap one, whose interior an estate agent would describe as '6 beds, 5 receps, 3 bath, fitted kitchen, basement storage, c/h, floo, integral owlery, & all mod cons'. It fits in Harry's room, and the saleswitch assures me that the interior is unplottable and glamoured against scrying so I'll have no nasty owls from the Ministry if the kids sneak a few spells while on holiday.

Harry is impressed as _hell_ with this example of magic in action far more than he is with his new bedroom - the tent doesn't come furnished, so it's basically the same as his old room just a bit bigger - and Petunia allows that she'd maybe have been a bit less dismissive of magic if she knew it could do _this._ Dudley sees nothing out of the ordinary about it: the muggleworthiness enchantments are pretty clever and he just carries on as if there was always an entire extra house behind Harry's bedroom door. One of the selling points is that you could entertain muggles as guests in this tent and they'd simply not notice anything out of the ordinary about having a six bedroom house in a tent pitched on a campsite unless you point it out to them repeatedly and forcefully with intent to let them in on the gag. Petunia isn't affected, another point for the Petunia-is-a-little-bit-magical theory. She is, happily, now blaming the magicals themselves rather than magic as a concept for her inability to attend Hogwarts.

Some experimentation later, I learn that whatever it is at Hogwarts that does for electronics, it's not present in sufficient quantities in the tent to break anything. So when I go out and sort out proper home entertainment - the Betamax is going in the attic, having served as a test subject in the tent - there'll be video and a sound system in the tent. TV reception inside is non-existent, but running a cable to the house aerial is a simple job for a local electrician, and we're having to cope with cables along the floor from the house electrical supply anyway. The electrician doesn't ask why I want a high-amperage socket on the upstairs landing and I don't tell him. The extra rooms the tent furnishes give us a library, study and laboratory, and Dudley's room becomes a games room for the boys - so I can shut them out of the tent while I'm working - while Dudley moves into the tent, getting a bedroom that's just for sleeping in.

Having a floo of our own would be the icing on the cake, of course, although for security's sake I don't get it connected up. It's perfectly possible to get an ex-directory address but I've no idea whether or how badly that might leak and frankly the longer I can go without having to deal with the Ministry the better I'll like it.

Thus the garage goes back to looking - to outsiders - like a bare space with tarps on the floor and walls, with a chest freezer at the back in which I'm accumulating the feedstock for my homunculus project. Wholesalers don't want to deal with me for one sale, of course, but there are a couple of local butchers who are happy to help with my 'experiments in medieval recreation cookery' by supplying whole pigs' heads, suckling pig carcasses and the entire gamut of offal. I was already braced for not being able to get really _good_ black pudding in the south, but even mediocre black pud is better than none at all and it's all the same if you're breaking it down for the materials to make a body with. I've picked pork products because I've heard that pigs are, at the meat-and-bone level, quite similar to humans so I'm hoping that all-pork feedstock will give me the right balance of reagents when they're magically rendered down. One of the suckling pigs gets barbecued as the weather turns nice to the immense delight of the boys and all of their friends that they invite around for pork-inna-bun. They _both_ want a pig roast for their sixth birthday parties.

The biggest job vis a vis preparation is making the reaction vessel. The arithmancy doesn't distinguish between grades of diamond - magically, unless you specifically need a particular cut of gem-quality diamond then powdered industrial diamond is as good as, and for some purposes better than, the Koh-i-Noor. Because, as a process, this has potential to go _hilariously_ wrong, I rent a lock-up on an industrial estate near Woking. My raw material is two pallets of coke, being the easiest form of carbon to buy in 25-kilo sacks.

My first dozen tries result in finely-divided carbon all over the inside of the lock-up - I'd known this would probably happen and bought a respirator and a case of tyvek coveralls, both items selling particularly well while people are paranoid about Chernobyl - but the thirteenth attempt results in a uniform if slightly lumpy block of what an appraiser would call 'dark coffee diamond'. (This is a grade of diamond more-or-less invented to try and sell worthless rocks as gems. While gem-quality diamonds are uncommon enough that De Beers can make price-fixing work, diamond as a material is basically just another mineral.)

With the basics down - and reversing the transfiguration is child's play, not least because the material remembers all previously inhabited loci in its magical phase space (See! I can make up my own jargon on the fly too! Suck it, theory-of-magic writers! Get some consistency, you fuckwits!) I buckle to and start refining my technique.

A couple more false starts and I learn to control the shaping as the diamond forms, and improve step-by-step in getting the impurities out. They don't matter for the magic - pure diamond doesn't occur in nature at all - but they do matter for being able to see inside the vessel. According to my notes it's attempt 43 that gives me my first serviceable result, about the right size and shape to serve as a sarcophagus for a thirteen-year-old. Number 61 is where I declare myself up to the task of safely making and unmaking these things as and when I need them, and I transfigure the final version into easy-to-carry ingots of diamond that I can unmake and remake in the garage once I've got them home.

I am, of course, never going to get rich doing this. Not only is diamond _way_ more common than the prices de Beers charge would suggest, but also there's a world of difference between 'diamond' and 'gem quality diamond'. One is an allotrope of carbon, the other a thing of beauty. Transfigurationists will tell you you can't make gemstones that will last, just imitations that revert after a while. I suspect - and I believe I will one day be able to prove - that this is a limitation of the artistic skill of transfigurationists rather than on the art itself. Getting the right lustre and cleavage and colour that make a gem suitable for jewelry use requires refined skill that is beyond most - certainly beyond me at this point - but should theoretically be attainable in a permanent transfiguration if someone cared to put in the years of practise required. Absent that effort, well, mineral samples that lack gemstone qualities? Just a case of knowing what you're doing, working from the right raw materials - which is _key_ in making your transfigurations permanent - and not minding that the results actually look like the rocks they in fact _are_. Or, in my case, slightly cloudy brown-tinted glass.

I'm able to slack off a bit on my preparations and rehearsals once I realise how much time I have before the Summer Solstice, which I've picked as the next auspicious date for my first attempt. Not only is it a Saturday, so Harry can do his part, the exact moment of local Solstice is at 5:28 in the late afternoon, British Summer Time. I _will_ have to get Vernon up early to prepare, but only so I'll be able to take my time over it. Next year's solstice is just before midnight, for example. Again, I'm doing things slowly and carefully with no short-cuts taken because, really, I don't trust my wand-work to rectify any errors as I go along. I should imagine that once I've done it once, I'll be able to do it with a lot less fuss and botheration in future and be more flexible about the date and time. For the first try, though, I'm going to science the _shit_ out of it.

If all goes well, I'll have a body to inhabit - a young one, there's a whole lot of development once the adult teeth start coming in that I don't care to try magically monkeying with at my present state of knowledge - before the beginning of July. Failure, of course, just means trying again after more study, but I'm quietly optimistic.

-oOo-

"No, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. Look, the disaster resulting from deregulation isn't until at _least_ two thousand and six, probably nearer two thousand and eight, and it's going to run on for _years_ and fuck up world politics for at least a decade after. What I'm talking about in '87 is a massive market correction, nothing more. Get me into short positions around the first week of October of that year, I'm _quite_ happy to miss out on some of the upward movement up to that point if you have to start getting out of the market earlier."

"Ah, right, I take your meaning now." I've been having a bit of a chat with Rhys about the kind of wealth management I'm after. It turns out that if you wait until after you've got an A-level in maths before you turn your hand to arithmancy, it's a lot easier than it looks to thirteen-year-olds. And, since it goes with Statistics like sausages go with mustard (the proper English stuff, not that there's anything _wrong_ with the French and American sorts, they just don't _satisfy_), I'm discovering I have something of a knack for Arithmantic Prognostication.

Of course, I'm cheating: I know that Big Bang begets Black Monday and together they sow the seeds for the the Credit Crunch. It's just that with Arithmancy I can _prove it_. Foretelling was the first use for which Arithmancy was devised by Pythagoras, building on much older traditions of numerology. The discipline has found other purposes since pre-classical Greece, of course: if you can couch predictions in numerical terms you can also work back from numerologically-quantified desired results to figure out what possible means are in or out of your available solution set. This is how it contributes to spell-crafting and magical research generally. The core of the discipline, however, is prediction.

"I'd like you to be careful with how you use these predictions," I go on to say, "because if they get too widespread they'll invalidate themselves by becoming a factor in the number squares they're based on. I'm holding out for improvements in home computing to the point where I can automate at least some of this and produce more responsive prognostications, but until then we're limited in what we can do if things go recursive like that."

"I'll take your word for it. Some of the stuff you sent me has us _all_ scratching our heads, and we've three Os and an EE in Newt-level arithmancy between us and a lot of experience."

"Well, If you treat me nicely I'll send you a reading list of the maths textbooks I cribbed the techniques out of."

"How nicely do I have to treat you to get you to come in and do a seminar showing your working for all this?"

I consider it. Doing the prep for something like that will be a bit of a chore, but on the upside it will enhance the capabilities of the bankers who're looking after my money. And hoarding knowledge is only very rarely a good idea, after all. Plus, if I make some 'informed speculations' about where computing is going to go, maybe one of them's a clever enough bugger to do all the hard work with computers when they come out so's I don't have to. God knows my ability to write code never got a lot past an evening course in Java. "My first thought," I say, "is that I probably will. Obviously, it's going to be a bit of a chore for me - I've got things that really ought to be a higher priority than teaching - but there _are_ some follow-on projects that you could look into for me in return. Which you'll find useful yourselves, quite within what you're being paid for by Coutts, so all I'm asking is for the results to be shared on the q-t."

"I don't see that being a problem at all, Mal. Let me know when you've got it ready, we'll do our best to be good hosts."

It occurs to me that since I've already got one form of forecasting up to about journeyman level, I might want to look in to others. After all, while they suggest in the books that Divination has a poor name due to a succession of crappy teachers, there might actually be something in that branch of magic available to a sufficiently determined researcher. Expanding the field of study to information-gathering magics generally - the future is only _one _direction one might turn one's inner eye, after all - could make it quite the ace in the hole. And telling the future isn't in and of itself impossible: we _know_ causality isn't quite as cut-and-dried in a magical universe as it is in the one I was born in. (Even there it was open to one or two theoretical loopholes.)

I put it aside for future study, adding another item to my rapidly-growing note-to-self list. For now - we're a few weeks into the '86/'87 fiscal year - I've got preparations for the body-growing procedure to look after and, more importantly, Harry's guardianship hearing to get him prepared for.

Not that he needs to _know_ anything, just that it's going to seem like a very big deal to a kid his age and it would be remiss not to ensure he understands all of it that he can within his present limits.

* * *

NOTES

The teacher-with-blue-hair incident is one I did wonder about when I first read it: how did they _think_ Harry pulled that off?

Baronis de Retz is a reference to Gilles de Rais under one of the variant spellings of his name. One of history's more alarming characters, the sort where the demon-summoning was one of the _less_ morally unsound things he indulged in.

Samuel Hartlib is a real historical figure. He did some moderately important stuff like educational reform and helping to organise the Invisible College, the forerunner to what we now know as The Scientific Community: scientists corresponding and meeting and exchanging ideas (and having massive outbreaks of feuding and drama, because 17th Century and also because Academics.) Hartlib was in the middle of all of that and - judging from his correspondence, which is available free on Sheffield University's Digital Humanities Institute website - having a whale of a time taking an interest in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. Including, as it happens, alchemy. I may have jazzed him up a bit: this version didn't wreck his health by drinking dilute sulphuric acid to cure his kidney stones, for one thing… (when I said pre-modern alchemists had some decidedly odd ideas, that was one of the examples I had in mind.)

The case about proceeds of crime is R. v. Cuthbertson (1981) AC 470 - which I looked up for the purposes of this note. It's about how I remembered.

If you found the estate agent jargon confusing, don't worry, so does everyone else. The blighters aren't even consistent about it, just to make house-hunting that bit more of a _special_ experience.

There's a ranking in kinds of mustard, and it goes like this: English Mustard, and then all the others. I will not be taking questions at this time. Black pudding is a form of blood sausage. Usually served cut in thick slices and fried. If you like it, you already know what's in it. If you don't, the recipe sounds … unappealing. Which is not reflected in how delicious the result is.

The magical theory bits you're just going to have to bear with me on for the time being (although Pythagoras being one of the earliest known arithmancers is historical fact). I do have this all worked out, but I'm not info-dumping unless and until I have to. We do have a story to be getting on with, after all, and it's already running way longer than I originally meant it to. I'm having _far_ too much fun with the world-building and figuring out what was really going on to bring about What Harry Saw In The Books.

Fanfic recommendation: Harry Potter, Self-Insert by 15Redstones on FFN. A very fun story, which promises much in the way of hijinks. Two words: magical rickrolling.


	13. Just as we start making progress

DISCLAIMER: Was nothing the Dursleys did in the books ever visibly hallowed by any order of the Family Division of the High Court without any of the legal consequences thereof in any way ensuing? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 13

_I put it aside for future study, adding another item to my rapidly-growing note-to-self list. For now - we're a few weeks into the '86/'87 fiscal year - I've got preparations for the body-growing procedure to look after and, more importantly, Harry's guardianship hearing to get him prepared for._

_Not that he needs to know anything, just that it's going to seem like a very big deal to a kid his age and it would be remiss not to ensure he understands all of it that he can within his present limits._

-oOo-

"It's a bit boring."

"I know, Harry, I know. The thing is, there's lots of people who need decisions from the judge, but only four judges here today, so there's a queue." Which is not _exactly_ how court lists work, but close enough for five-and-a-half.

I _had_ thought that having got out of litigation, gone on to retire, and then actually _die_ that I had seen my last long wait in a grotty County Court waiting room amid a crowd of bored junior advocates and nervous clients and witnesses. Guildford County Court had an odd mix of memories for me: I ended up going there a _lot_ as a trainee, and it was the venue of my first win as an advocate. It was also the scene of dozens of hours of getting faffed about by clients and court staff, standing waiting for a case that could come on at any moment but invariably _didn't_, getting my lunch out of vending machines and actually _hoping_ for someone to go doolally from the stress and kick off because at least it'd be entertaining to watch. It's not quite as dismal as I remember - when I was-will-be-curse-these-trime-travel-tenses there it had had another ten years of anxiety soaked into its 1960s Municipal Brutalist concrete - but it's still about as much fun as persistent rectal itching.

Bright side: Harry's never had a vending machine lunch before, so to him it's going to be an adventure rather than, as it generally was for me, a reason to regret the whole "fuck it, I'm going to be a lawyer" decision. (I had _originally_ wanted to be a bomber pilot, but my eyesight wasn't good enough.)

"Why does the judge have to decide?"

"Well, when there's an argument, the judge's job is to decide who's right. Or, at least, who's not as wrong as the other fellow, sometimes arguments are really, really _stupid_. And when there's children involved, like you, sometimes people make silly decisions, so the judge checks everyone's decisions to make sure they're the right ones."

"Oh. How do you get to be a judge?"

"Well, you see all the people with great big wodges of paper in their arms?" I point out a few; the blue-covered counsels' notebooks are distinctive. "They're lawyers, their job is to know the law and help people like us in places like this. When they've been doing it for years and years and years they know _loads_ of law and how it all works, and they can apply for a job as a judge. Which is why the judge is almost certainly someone's granddad or grandma, it takes a long time to learn enough law to be a judge."

"Where were you when I was doing my Law Society Finals, Mr. Dursley? That's a better explanation than I ever got from my Civil Procedure lecturer." It's our advocate for the day: Harry's case is straightforward enough that not only does the solicitor I retained for Harry not feel the need to retain a barrister, but he's sent along one of his articled clerks to get some experience.

_Fuckin' 'ell, did I ever look that green?_ I'd been warned ahead of time, and of course I know the score here a lot better than young Mr. Elphick does, but it makes me wonder what some of the clients must've thought when they saw me wander in with an armful of pleadings and a faceful of the reminders of teenage acne.

"Well, Harry needs to understand what's going on, so I read up ahead of time. Another lesson for you there, Harry. Be prepared."

Harry's taking it all in, of course. Bit shy around the chap he doesn't know yet, but not visibly intimidated the way some kids get.

Elphick has news: "we're on next, and from what I understand the case that's in now is as straightforward as Harry's, so it shouldn't be long."

He's not wrong. We're in court fifteen minutes - and four requests from Harry for help with hard words in his book - later.

The District Judge's chambers are exactly like every other such room furnished by the Lord Chancellor's Department. The judge's desk with the advocate's table pushed right up against it and a row of three seats at the back of the room. The whole thing is over in ten minutes: Harry's court-appointed Guardian _ad litem_ \- I've not even bothered remembering the man's name, he's just whoever was next on Surrey County Council's list of solicitors available to do the work - notes that the social worker's report discloses no problems (her visit had lasted all of twenty minutes according to Petunia, and from a peek at her memories of the event would probably have missed it if Harry had still been under the stairs), that Harry is doing well at school and that he's happy to be where he is. Nobody has noticed that this is a recent development.

I've given everyone to understand that Harry has been told his parents died in a road traffic accident, because the official story is that his parents just dropped off the face of the earth and we can't find them, and having regard to Harry being present in court today the Guardian draws the judge's attention to the relevant part of the hearing bundle where the private inquiry agent lists all the reasons why James and Lily can be safely presumed dead unless they turn up alive in the next two and a bit years. An actual death certificate is going to have to await a separate set of proceedings: at less than five years we're a bit previous on having the Potters declared legally dead. Seven years is traditional, but not required, but four-and-a-bit years is probably not enough. The Act of Parliament that fixes the seven year period in law won't be passed until the twenty-teens some time.

While that puts a stopper on tracing and managing any assets the Potters might have had in the muggle world, we're less constrained on the magical side. For now, though, Elphick is explaining that there's a modest sum held in a savings account intended for Harry's school fees and university, and that it requires management now that I'm going to be making the payments. He tells the judge Vernon Dursley, of course, but it's going to be me. Coutts isn't _quite_ the name to conjure with that Rhys thinks it is, but they've got a good enough reputation that I barely have to nudge the judge's mind into not asking any probing questions.

"Now," the judge says once both advocates have made their representations, "we have the young man himself in chambers today, do we not? Harry, would you come forward, please."

I have to nudge Harry a bit, and he grabs my hand so I have to go with him.

"I'm sure this must all seem terribly boring to you, am I right?"

Harry looks up at me and I give him a small nod. "A bit, sir, yes." _Oh good, he's remembered the proper form of address._

"I see you brought a book to read? Can you tell me what it's about?"

"Ancient Egypt, sir. Uncle told me a silly story about pyramids and I want to learn the true one." It's the Ladybird History series book on Ancient Egypt. Which does have a bit in it about the Pyramids as you'd expect.

"Your Uncle told you about camels, then?" The judge says. He's clearly got kids of his own, if he knows the story about camels, although he doesn't look quite old enough to be a granddad yet.

Harry's tone turns indignant. "He did, and what he said was _silly._ I saw a camel at the zoo, an' I saw when it did a poo and it _wasn't a triangular brick_."

Elphick and the guy-whose-name-I-still-can't-remember both have to turn away. Elphick's wheezing laughter isn't _quite_ inaudible.

Mister District Judge Sir has an _admirable_ poker face, however. "Well I never. And all this time I thought camels were how Egypt got its pyramids. And you say your book says something different?"

Harry nods.

As do I. I adopt a pose of exaggerated innocence. "Harry has been very motivated to learn to read so as to prove me wrong, sir. I, too, was dismayed to learn that everything I knew about camels was wrong."

"Well, learning is important. Keep it up, Harry. Are you happy to keep living with your Aunt and Uncle?"

Harry nods vigorously.

"I'll take that as a yes. You can sit down if you like, Harry, or you can stay while I and these two gentlemen decide on the right words for the order making that official."

The rest is the ordinary back-and-forth of submissions-in-chambers, and we can expect the formal sealed order within a week. Getting Harry's affairs squared away is very nearly done.

-oOo-

"Huw," I say, shaking his hand as he greets me in the bank's lobby, "good to see you again. Are we talking about Harry or me today?"

"A little of you, and a lot of Harry, and not all of it terribly good, I'm afraid. Step into the conference room here, we already have tea for you, and I'll go over what our Trustee people have found out."

That sounds ominous indeed. He says no more until we've got tea and biscuits in front of us.

"Right," Rhys says, "I felt I had to call you in to meet because, frankly, it's all a bit of a mess. All young Harry has in the world is, basically, money, and I'm afraid that while everything that was done to bring the Potters' estate to that point was legal, there has been very definite sharp practise."

I don't know why I was content to assume that all Harry was left by his parents was a vault full of gold. I did, in theory, pass Inheritance and Probate all those years ago - it wasn't even one of the exams I turned up hungover for - and it's unusual to say the least to have an estate that consists entirely of cash in the bank. "Do we know who the executor was, at least?"

"No executor. If the Potters left wills, they never surfaced. Which seems a little fishy to me."

I rock a hand to express my ambivalence. "Intestacy's a lot more common than most people suppose, especially among the under forties. Still, at least there'd be an administrator?"

"The Office of the Seventh Clerk is the Ministry of Magic office that deals with it. No idea why it's called that -"

"Actually, this is one I _do_ actually know. The forerunner of the Official Solicitor and the Public Trustee was the Office of the Six Clerks in Chancery. Got disbanded for corruption in the 19th Century some time and replaced with the modern versions. Clearly the wizarding world had their own seventh clerk. It's not _often_ I get to trot out my collection of obscure legal history trivia, so when the opportunity comes along I pounce." I can also see the way that this story is heading. "Would I be right in guessing that the Clerk himself had a surname that features prominently in Nature's Nobility?" That book is the wizarding world's answer to Burke's Peerage, print-the-legend approach to genealogy and all, and it has become shorthand between us for a lot of jokes about the narrow-horizoned yokels of the wizarding world.

"I'd call you a cynic, but you're nearly right, you only got the gender wrong. Servilia Avery. Related closely enough to share a surname with one poor unfortunate victim of the Imperius Curse, second cousin once removed to the Octavian Avery who is currently at liberty after proving to the Wizengamot's satisfaction he wasn't in control of himself. Interestingly, his father, second cousin _not_ removed to our esteemed Seventh Clerk, was in Slytherin House from '38 to '45 and by repute close friends with one Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"Oh, you figured it out?" It probably wasn't terribly hard, I've not exactly been discreet about it. His signature that I've been cheerfully forging is, by the standards of such things, almost legible, although he _could_ have been using a pseudonym. Should have been, really, he certainly had a fake identity for holding most of his muggle assets.

"It was your mention of Moaning Myrtle that started us off, see? Not hard to find the odd man out in Slytherin House during that time. One of my colleagues is a crossword buff, spotted the anagram right off. We've had dossiers on that crowd for _years_, of course."

That makes a lot of sense. A business on the boundary between the magical and non-magical worlds would definitely have to be alive to political risk from both sides, of course.

"So," I ask, "how did Servilia Avery get involved and what did she _do?_"

"It starts in mid-November of '81. Dumbledore addresses the wizengamot to the effect that Harry is safe with family away from wizarding Britain, we think he was contriving to imply that he'd been placed with an overseas branch of the Potter family, not that anyone knows if such a thing exists, without actually stating as such, because indirect lies and lies by omission are perfectly acceptable in that forum where the lie direct will get you chucked out. They have fairly woolly guardianship laws on the magical side, so it's not like anyone had much ground to object as such."

"So he assumed responsibility for Harry, how did they get administration of the Potter estate away from him?"

"They bloody _didn't_. He handed the matter over to the Ministry to sort out. From there it's a short step to the Seventh Clerk as her office is where all such estates end up."

"At best shocking naivety," I remark.

"Bloody _ignorance_ is what it is," Rhys says, actually bristling as he thinks about it. "It's not like the magical world is well-served for lawyers, mind, but he could have found _someone_ among his circle of friends who might have taken the job on."

I make a note to look into wizarding lawyers at some point. They're a tiny community, so I suspect most of it's enthusiastic amateurs and gentleman jurists of one sort or another. The kind of people even a not-much-more-than-mediocre solicitor like me could eat for breakfast, bluntly. "I'm going to hazard a guess that once our esteemed Seventh Clerk got her hooks into the estate, if there was a will it went up in smoke right after it was found?"

"Since a will would have prevented _everything_ that followed, I'm almost certain that that did in fact happen. I don't know if you're familiar with the way the old magical families operate, Mal, but they keep to the old Roman ideal of not living a day intestate. Unfair on your descendants, see? Anyway, having handed control of the Potter estate to a close relative of one of the followers of the villain they just defeated, Dumbledore uses his portfolio of public offices, his influence within the magical community and his status as an elder statesman of magical British politics to exercise the absolute square root of bugger-all oversight in the matter."

"Let me guess," I say, "productive assets and real property sold off at an undervalue to cronies, sweetheart deals on ongoing contracts that cut the payments down to nearly nothing, and investments cashed out without regard to market conditions?" Those are the obvious, easy abuses. I doubt the wizarding world is up to _real_ chicanery, with which Harry could readily have been left an abject pauper. Besides, they couldn't know in advance that Dumbledore would give them a free hand, so they'd have had to preserve at least _some_ modesty to cover their embezzlements.

"Down to and including the personal effects, I'm sorry to say." Rhys pauses to let me digest the enormity of that one. Ensuring an orphan has something to remember his parents by barely even counts as basic human decency and they didn't even give him _that_. I wonder, idly, how much it costs in the wizarding world to have someone flogged within an inch of their lives and hanged the rest of the way. Or if putting their head on a pike over the entrance to Diagon Alley would breach the bounds of good taste. Rhys goes on, "The house at Godric's hollow was given to the Ministry on a thousand-year lease at a peppercorn rent for use as a national monument."

"Repair costs remain charged to the lessor?" It's the first thing that comes to mind under the heading of 'how to take the piss beyond all reason in managing an estate'.

"Not _quite_ that bad, but certainly no compensation for the loss of a family home. The Potters had several houses, none grand enough to call a family seat but still a worthwhile portfolio of assets, and the whole lot went at back-of-a-lorry prices. Mostly, as you surmised, to a cast of characters from Nature's Nobility. And not the nice half of the book, either, mind."

"So having lost their chief to the Potters, they took their revenge by asset-stripping their orphaned son?" I have _Views_ on this sort of thing, as does Huw, and between the two of us there's a distinct bite of ozone in the air of this conference room. And frost forming on the inside of the windows. I'm pretty sure if we had any of the perpetrators in custody we'd have discarded all norms of civilised behaviour and started egging each other on. Crucifixions would be just the fucking _start_.

"While that was probably a _motive, _I'm sorry to say it's standard practise with intestate magical estates as far as we can tell, and when it comes to this sort of thing wizarding law is an utter _joke_. Which Dumbledore did not a thing to inform himself of, never mind stop, even when it was a case he'd taken a direct interest in. He's spent his entire life as a schoolteacher, he hasn't a _clue_ how the real world works. And that's the _charitable_ interpretation of what he's done, look you."

"I'm open to uncharitable interpretations at this time, as it happens." I'm pretty sure this is a straight-up case of the clueless schoolteacher not thinking the money was important. Hogwarts runs on endowments and Ministry subsidies, so it's not like he actually _needed_ to know anything that brought about the headline figure of his budget. More than likely the actual purse-strings are held by the Board of Governors anyway. Nevertheless, I should hear the alternative views.

"Good heavens, where would I even _start_? The child has an entire bloody _mythology_ around him already, there are childrens' books about him on sale in Diagon Alley and everything, and I can't believe that Dumbledore didn't spot _that_ immediately after that night. He might be ignorant about money, but the man has been in politics for decades now, and even in a tiny little pond like wizarding Britain he should have picked up the _basics_. Knowing that, his first act is to place the child, like milk on the doorstep no less, with muggles who know nothing about the magical world. His second act is to hand the boy's patrimony over to his enemies. And ever since then he's left the situation entirely alone, and you say he's left instructions that Harry isn't to be told about _any_ of it? I can't think of what his end-game is, if he has a plan at all, but it can't be good for little Harry. I wouldn't like to think of either of _mine_ being dumped in a situation like that."

"Has he made any public statement that he thinks Mr. Riddle might not be all the way dead?" It's a fairly vital point: understanding what the _fuck_ Dumbledore was thinking that night on Privet Drive hinges on it. _Ten Dark and Difficult Years_ is a bloody big thing to explain away when you're talking about the welfare of a toddler, after all.

"He's made a few speeches on the floor of the Wizengamot, and in a few other venues, about Riddle's taint not being truly gone from our society, which I suppose counts, but never actually said outright whether the man's still with us or gone altogether. You think Dumbledore might actually have a _plan_?"

Again I make the rocking-hand gesture. "Maybe. I'm sure he has something he _thinks_ is a plan. You have to wonder what the hell it might be that requires poor Harry's welfare to be disregarded like this, though. Certainly, the fact that I've been able to do the things I have tell me he doesn't have anything _I_ would regard as a reasonable plan to deal with a threat like Riddle and the Death Eaters. There are enemy assets lying around unseized and he's not paying attention to what I think we both suspect is an important political asset."

"Out of curiosity, what _would_ you regard as a reasonable plan?"

"Well, by analogy with the Nazis, which they resemble in more than a few ways, I think it was Hitler himself who reckoned that the only way they could have been stopped before they got going was with utmost brutality. Or some similar wording. I don't mean necessarily _physical_ brutality, but expropriations and proscriptions should have been handed out like snuff at a bloody wake just to start with. There should have been at least _some_ capital penalties handed out, and susceptibility to mind control, if it was allowed as a defence at all without any of the half-dozen or so magical methods of getting at the truth, should have meant immediate disbarment from any public office and the appointment of something like a Trustee in Lunacy because they're clearly too weak-willed to be allowed to manage assets."

Rhys's grin gets broader and broader as I speak. "If you're thinking of making a run for Minister, you've got my vote, look you."

"Hah. I shall treat that suggestion with the contempt it deserves. Wizarding Britain is an utter _circus,_ and I for one don't want the ballache of being in charge of the fucking monkeys. No, for reasons I don't fully understand I ended up on the scene when Harry needed me - Dudley almost as much, if I was to put my hand on my heart - and I volunteered for the responsibility. Once it's discharged, I'm _out_. You know Hartlib wants me to join his crowd, right?" Rhys hasn't mentioned knowing about the involvement of Perenelle Flamel and all the other alchemists, so I don't bring it to his attention. I have _no idea_ what the etiquette is about gossip among them, but least said soonest mended.

"He mentioned as much. Told me I should shape my investment advice accordingly, you were likely to be around a very long time even if your project doesn't pay off."

"Subject to the short-term exigencies of a brewing civil war that I've volunteered for, we can discuss that. For the moment, though, what do you need from me to get Harry's money working for him?"

"Just a signature or two, nothing more. Gringotts will take a few days to process the paperwork and then we're in business. I could have sent the documents to you in the post, but I felt you'd want to know about all of the dirty pool the buggers have been playing in a face-to-face meeting. You might have had an idea or two about it that I could get started on right away, if it was something we could help with."

"How much did Harry lose, by the by? Since I've just trousered a largish pile of seized enemy assets, I can probably cover some of the gap for him without being particularly wounded in the pockets."

"Tricky question, since the wizarding property market isn't quite as liquid as the real-world one and that's where the bulk of the robbery happened. He's got just over a quarter million Sterling equivalent in Gringotts right now, and he should have nearly three times that if the estate had been liquidated at reasonably fair values and the productive assets kept. I'm guessing you're not after a precise figure?"

"No, no need. If we can do the paperwork for transferring a half million sterling over today, let's get that done. It's wizarding-side money so Inland Revenue don't need to know, do I understand that correctly?" I have a vague idea of devoting some effort to robbing even more Death Eaters to get the money back, but that's an idea, not even a plan yet, for the future.

"Indeed not. We generally offshore our Special Circumstances customers to limit their exposure to that sort of investigation anyway."

"Will we be closing the Gringotts vault altogether?" I ask. There may after all be a use for it: managing funds across the muggle and magical divide is well off my personal map.

"We are. Gringotts don't like there to be links that the Ministry might be able to see. The goblins have got away with circumventing the control the Ministry thinks they have for nearly three hundred years at this point, and they didn't manage that by being careless. Simply put, you can have a vault with Gringotts or an account with us, not both."

"One day I'd _love_ to investigate the history of that. One suspects the books on the shelves in Diagon Alley are about as valid history as the Matter of Britain. However!" Getting distracted by amusing questions of Lies Wizards Tell Themselves is _not_ on today's agenda, "I assume that they write and ask for the key back if the vault is closed, yes?"

"Yes. And since neither of us know for certain who actually has the key, I suppose that we can get away with not telling them that Dumbledore has it. However, it could well be that they already know. They have no record of Dumbledore making any withdrawals, which we were quite relieved to find, but it could well be that he told them he had the key by way of courtesy. I think you should assume that at some point quite soon Dumbledore is going to know that you've involved yourself."

"Which I'm going to want to plan for. Could you let me know the exact date that the closure happens? Your introduction to Hartlib paid off handsomely, so I'm going to be making an attempt at the new body thing quite soon. The solstice is the next auspicious date, and I think it's going to take a week or so for the process to finish. At which point I'm going to be cutting about in a body with a physical age of about five, using aging potions when I need to look like the adult I actually am." Rhys nods at that; it's one of the most basic disguise potions going and an absolute godsend for this purpose: they're a sort of polyjuice of yourself that gives you a reasonable guess as to what you'll look like in the future, distance set at brewing time and duration titrated by dosage. I'm going to have to get busy establishing real-world identities - there are _huge_ holes in the system as at this date - for both old and young versions of myself. I go on, "It's a vulnerable time for me, and handling an irate old wizard who thought he was in control of a situation and suddenly finds he isn't, well, it has the potential to be all manner o' difficult."

"An irate wizard whose motives we have reason to be suspicious of, into the bargain. I don't envy you. Still, by that time the matter will be fully beyond him doing anything about it without threatening the Statute of Secrecy. We have defences that we're confident of against anything short of that, he's not the first stroppy wizard we'll have had through our doors, see?"

I nod. There's not a lot I can say: I'm rather bricking it at the prospect of facing Dumbledore, and the only comforting thought is that he's known to be very slow to violence. My best hope is that he'll let me get a word in edgewise. With that much, I can persuade him to a sentence or two, and if I can thereby at least draw him in to a discussion I should be able to convince him that removing me from the picture - which I can and will make extraordinarily difficult for him - is going to bugger things up altogether. I've time to think and prepare, at any rate, and for now I've got papers to sign and a copy of Rhys's file to peruse.

Also, note to self: find out who the investigators are who got all the gen on Harry's estate, and see if they're open to side jobs. I can afford it, and even if I can't _steal_ from the buggers, knowing who's got what and from whom is the kind of information you can use to start them squabbling with each other. An amusing diversion if nothing else.

-oOo-

"Hello, Missus Flamel," Harry says, sort of half-emerging from behind me, a bit shy around strangers still. Mme. Flamel actually volunteered to come and help with the Big Day, which I'm glad of. We're going to need a small blood sample from Harry, which he has been warned about and has promised to be brave for, and I don't even know how to do regular phlebotomy, never mind the paediatric variety. Perenelle has, she tells me, been a qualified medical practitioner of one sort or another long enough that she taught medicine at the temple school at Sais, and _actually quotes me her BMA number_ to establish that she has kept current.

(The torrent of pre-modern Greek profanity over the telephone when I asked her how difficult it was to learn phlebotomy was a bit over the odds, if you ask me. Does nothing to pin down her origins either, since I can't tell the difference by ear between medieval, Koine and Classical Greek, and they were _incredibly_ widespread and long-lived languages from the rise of Alexander the Great to the fall of Byzantium. I barely have more than a few pleasantries in Modern Greek, when all's said and done.)

She has come today looking entirely stylish in floral print that harks back to the nineteen-forties and a headscarf that frames her face in such a way that it shifts my guess at where she's from to the eastern end of the med. Egypt or the Levant, for a certainty, she's got a face that would blend in anywhere from the Nile to the Dardanelles. She's been in England long enough, of course, that she's got the lingo down to and including a cut-glass Received Pronunciation accent that would probably make the Queen her own self feel a bit common.

She does that knees-together squat thing that skirted women do to get down on Harry's level. "Has Mal told you why I'm here, Harry?"

"He says you know lots about magic and alchemy, Missus Flamel, and you're a doctor too so you're going to help with the bits Mal doesn't know how to do very well."

"That's right. Has Mal told you we're going to need a tiny little bit of your blood?"

Harry nods.

"Well, I know how to get it out without it hurting at all. Just a tiny little bit of magic and a little needle, you'll feel a little push on your skin and then it's all over. Won't that make it easier to be brave?"

"Yes," Harry says, nodding. "I've been putting words in a bottle as well, and Mal already did the swab thingy inside my mouth."

"Oh, jolly good," Perenelle says, "and I see you've brought someone to help, there? Care to tell me who that is?"

"It's Mister Brontosaurus," Harry says, holding his stuffed dinosaur up for inspection. "He's only a toy, but Mal says he's good hugging practise an' it never hurts to have a dinosaur on your side even if he's a vegetarian, 'cos he's dead big and stompy."

"I just _bet_ he is." She straightens up. "Now, I'm going to get changed into my special clothes for doing magic, and then we can see how far Mal has got with getting ready."

"Mal says he's going to be my brother when we're finished," Harry says, with a curious tone in his voice. "Will it _really_ work like that?"

"How've you explained it to him?" She's got a slightly sharp tone in her voice. I suspect she's got similar opinions to mine when it comes to kids, and if my handling of Harry ever falls below her personal standards she's unlikely to be gentle with me.

"Well, we've been over how genes work to make bodies, both the normal way and the way we're doing it today, and that the body we're making would be exactly the same as a twin brother if he'd had one. He knows that it'll still be me inside, so not _really_ a brother, and I've been doing for him the way a daddy would and I'm going to keep doing that. We won't tell anyone about the brother thing, because whenever we're out of the house I'll be using magic to look like a grown-up and when I'm doing that he can call me Uncle Mal." Harry's nodding along. He's grabbed the 'brother' part and clung to it, unfortunately. The actual relationship we're going to have is 'foster-dad who looks like a twin brother a lot of the time' which is probably a bit much for him at his age and with his abuse-arrested development.

"So, Harry," Flamel says, "someone who'll _look_ like a brother and can act like one if he needs to, but not _really_ a brother because he's a grown up on the inside? Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Harry says confidently, "I understand."

"Why don't you go and sit down for a moment while I have a talk with Mal?" Harry nods and goes to sit on the sofa where he was reading before Mme. Flamel arrived.

"Are you sure about this?" she asks me, in a low voice, "the ideas in that little boy's head are going to have an effect on the magic, and I'm not sure he's got an accurate grasp of what we're doing. A good grasp, for a child his age, but not an _accurate_ one."

"I'm counting on it," I tell her, "that little man's faith in me has got us out of at least one dangerous situation already. He understands that I'm going to be family to him, and the ambiguity of him not being quite sure _how_ is going to work out nicely since I'm filling more than one role in relation to him."

"Show me the arithmancy," she orders.

"I've got three highly-likely possibilities, four more less-likely-but-still-probable outcomes for a sevenfold path, and a double-ogdoad of possible improbabilities," I'm calling the lever-arch full of calculation worksheets to my hand as I speak, "giving me a circle of twenty-three ends-in-view. _This_ page is the executive summary: they're _all_ positive results. I've stacked the deck _that hard_. And, of course, we've got a prime number of augurable outcomes _and_ a strong three-and-seven right in the heart of it all."

She snorts, taking the file and flipping through it. I'm confident in my working: I have been _thorough_. You get Isaac Fucking Newton marking your homework, you really can do no other. At length she snorts again. "You've rather done it up brown, haven't you?"

"Ooooh yes," I say, "if a thing's worth doing it's worth tearing the arse out of it, I always say. Of course, Riddle's shade acting like such an utter idiot that first night gave me a flying start: Harry couldn't help but see me as his own personal superhero after that. His faith in me is quite humbling, if I was to put my hand on my heart over it. I'll be writing again to Nicolas, of course, but in the meantime convey my thanks again for his monographs on faith, hope and joy in ceremonial magic. Not just strong stuff, but magic we've been having _fun_ with."

"Oh, Nico will be insufferable over it, I'm sure. He's always been of the view that you get the best results when you're happy in your work, and he calls me a horrible morbid killjoy when I maintain that practicality means you can't rely on it. Still, that cheery approach to life he has is about half of why I married him." She's smiling fondly. I'm rather looking forward to meeting Nicolas, it has to be said. If he can still make a dreadnought like Mme. Flamel come over all soppy after six centuries, he must be a rare sort indeed.

"So, are you happy to proceed?" I ask, "It's not like there aren't other auspicious days in the near future and the difference in the arithmancy isn't _that_ great, especially if you think we should go back to the drawing board." I'm sincere about this: when someone with at least a millennium of experience tells you to abort mission, you _listen_.

"Actually, no," she says, "you've done well and I'm quietly confident. Nicolas and Isaac marked your homework on that arithmancy, after all, and Nico in particular assures me you've done well with it. I was just a little surprised by Harry's remark but I see you've accounted for his child's understanding. Which, well done, by the way. 'Never work with children or animals' is a proverb in magic as well as on the stage, after all, and it's for good reason, but you seem to be up to it."

"In Harry's case, certainly," I allow.

"Right, where can I change?"

"We've the house to ourselves, so I'd suggest picking one of the unused bedrooms in the tent in the room directly opposite the top of the stairs."

Once Mme. Flamel is changed - a plain dress and long shawl, both in undyed but high-quality linen, which was apparently working clothes for a physician-priestess in her day, I don't know enough about historical costumes to guess when and where that was - we process out to the garage. There are muggleworthiness rune-parchments - they're a standard enchantment, you can buy them ready-made in Diagon Alley and several books explain how to make them - pinned to stakes along the property boundaries so nobody in the adjoining houses will notice that we're all dressed rather oddly as we cross the back garden. The clothing is as much a part of the ceremonial as anything else, and has to be white and 'proper to our function'. It was Hartlib who clued me in that I should be guided by my own understanding of that last, and since we're doing something from the most scientific-medical end of magical practice, I settled on white scrubs and labcoat.

Harry's got the same in his own size - I had to prevail on Petunia to get out her sewing machine to cut the smallest size they sold down - and I suspect we've got his next Halloween costume sorted out with the addition of just a few props and a wig. He's full of the importance of the occasion, and because his childlikeness (is that even a word? It is now!) is a vital part of what we're doing I've made sure he brought Mister Brontosaurus - the first toy of his own he ever had - and bought him a Fisher Price Doctor playset to carry with him. He has his gene sample - a simple cheek swab in a sterile tube - in one lab coat pocket and the bottle he's been speaking into all morning in the other.

Mme Flamel is absolutely made up with the sight of him and stops to give him a hug. "You, young man, absolutely _look the part_. Well done, and I'm sure you're going to be a brilliant wizard when you're all grown up." She follows it up with a kiss on the forehead that leaves a little smear of lipstick. I honestly can't tell if she's gone all grandmotherly to reinforce Harry's part in this or if it's genuine. Or both. Both is good.

Either way, Harry grins at the praise and eats up the affection, and then remembers to go back to being Serious and Proper. I haven't told him to do this, he has just decided that this is a Big Day that should be approached with all solemnity.

I've been up since half past three this morning getting everything set up. Runic and alchemical texts chalked on every wall, a carefully-traced geometry on the floor, made up of plotted curves and figures inside a bounding circle, and in the centre the diamond sarcophagus that is my reaction vessel. It's raised on diamond blocks over an old-fashioned oil lamp whose symbolic fire and heat are all that the magical reaction is going to need to get started. I've dealt with the actual heat-of-reaction needed for the alchemical part by the simple expedient of buying a shitload of fan heaters and putting them on thermostatic controls. It's going to be thirty-seven celsius in here for the whole seven nights the alchemy needs to run for. Strictly speaking, between 37.3 and 37.6 at the thermocouple suspended over the sarcophagus lid. The electricity bill after the next meter reading is going to be _hilarious_.

The practical upshot is that it is stinking hot in here, and Vernon is _not_ built for the heat, even after nearly a year of healthy eating and sensible exercise has slimmed him down to merely burly. Harry has been thoroughly hydrated before we came out, so he should be fine for the forty-one minutes this is going to take. Mme. Flamel takes the heat in stride, she's dressed for it after all, and unless I miss my guess she grew up somewhere that heat like this was normal conditions.

There are lab stools for Mme Flamel and Harry - she helps him on to his - because the first half hour is just me. I have a hundred kilos of rendered, slurried pig in five-gallon brewers' carboys and the first step is levitating those to the sarcophagus while holding the lid up. It's a tricky bit of levitation, but I've been practising. Having a wand in my hand massively raises the weight limits, and gives me enough extra dexterity that I can do this while reciting the spell I wrote. It's a simple chant to consecrate the materials to the task at hand and dedicate the vessel to its purpose. Levitating everything doesn't just keep me out of the bounding circle, it ensures that while I'm chanting the spell my magic is touching everything it needs to affect. The chant itself is in very simple latin, which I picked for the language of the spell because it's much easier to stay on-metre without sacrificing grammatical accuracy _and_ rhyme isn't a thing in latin verse.

Because it has to be sung, I go with plainchant to the tune of Nothing Else Matters. I picked it because I know it well, what with being kind of a fan until they decided to just be completely rubbish. I also knew before I started how well it _works_ for plainchant - there's an actual Gregorian chant cover of the Metallica original - and the original lyrics have overtones of fierce commitment that I want in the magic I'm doing. It's also dead easy to transpose into a major key to remove any possible taint of gloom from proceedings, even on the cheap-as-chips Casiotone keyboard I bought to rehearse with.

When I upend the carboys into the sarcophagus on the final beat there's a slight moment of low comedy as Harry calls out "Yuck!" at the sight of the pinkish-grey slime that runs out. There are also slurping, glooping, and farty noises that set him off giggling for the whole five minutes it takes for the vessels to empty. Which is _brilliant_. Removal of counteracting influences is a major component of ritual magic and you don't get much better at fucking off the dark forces than a child's carefree laughter. I'm grinning along with him, and Mme. Flamel has a pursed-lips smile on her face. She's got a fairly earthy sense of humour about her, so I suspect that only matronly dignity is keeping her from joining in with Harry.

I notice, while I'm spending the next twenty minutes lighting votive candles, lamps and censers in a carefully-timed sequence and chanting the spells to go with, that Harry has his bottle open again and is speaking in to it. I've told him to tell the bottle everything he likes and hopes about me and my new body, and everything he can think of to say if he was telling a new friend about me. I'm confident it'll all be good stuff, of course. I can see that he has an attentive audience, but I've been careful not to listen in. I trust Harry, and it's part of the magic that I have to _show_ that trust. He's been filling that bottle since Petunia and Dudley went out for the day - the Zoo again, Dudley is a boy of firm and fixed tastes - with the most amazingly solemn and attentive expression on his face. Although I've spotted him giggling as he talks to the bottle a couple of times, so there's a chance _that_ part is going to come in stronger than I planned for. There isn't a balancing factor - this is a working for a male body, so everything's in odd numbers - and I knew it was a bit of a wild card. Can't be helped, and 'better than planned for' is rarely unwelcome.

Once the lights are lit - they'll burn down naturally over the next few hours, leaving the sarcophagus in the warm and dark - we have a few minutes in which there is no critical timing at all and we're just waiting to start the final stages.

"Enjoying it so far, Harry?"

"I liked the song," he says, "and the gloopy stuff was funny when it went all farty." More giggles. "What's it made of?"

"It's all that pork I had in the freezer, all minced up small with pure fresh water. It's like really runny sausage, I suppose." There are alchemical and potions reagents in there too, and a couple of bags of bonemeal. Getting it all to the right consistency involved a lot of casting of a couple of simple spells, a catering-grade blender and a sweaty hour of stirring a 55-gallon drum with a rowan-wood paddle.

That's another round of giggles, around which he gasps out, "Mal's - goin' - to - be - made - of - SAUSAGE!"

"I _know_. And, you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. Sausages are brilliant. Dead tasty."

Harry's still giggling a bit. "Sorry, I'll try an' be _seeerious._"

"Long as you stay happy, our kid, you can be as serious or silly as you want. Now, are you ready to be brave for us?"

He gives us a loud, clear, "YEP!" and thrusts out his arm to Mme. Flamel.

She produces a swab with a sharp medicinal smell and rubs it on the crook of his elbow.

"I'll hold you steady," I tell Harry, as I hug him close from behind and reach around to take hold of his wrist. "You decide if you want to watch or not."

"I'll be brave," Harry says, in a firm voice, fixing his gaze on where the medicated swab was.

"What a good little boy you are," Mme. Flamel tells him, "I wish all my patients were as brave as you. Now, it shouldn't hurt, but you'll feel me pressing. If you could just take a tight grip around his wrist, Mal, and squeeze a few times for me - there." In a move that speaks of long practice she has the needle in his arm, a 7cc sample taken, and the needle out and cotton wool pressed on the puncture in what can't be much more than a couple of seconds.

"I do like working with this modern equipment," she says, "it used to be so much harder. Now, the most important part of the procedure. A lollipop for a brave little boy, yes?"

I've no idea whether it's sleight of hand or a cheeky bit of magic - I don't hear anything, but this room is, magically speaking, loud as _balls_ \- but she flourishes her hand and Harry gets his choice of raspberry, lime, orange and strawberry lollies. He picks strawberry, and gets the other three tucked in his lab-coat top pocket. "For later."

Harry has been completely cool about the whole thing, and I'm suitably impressed. I've no idea whether I'm just lucky, or what, but Harry is now the fourth kid I've accompanied for medical procedures that handled it with complete aplomb. If, heaven forbid, I ever have to take him in to get stitches - and two out of my three managed to get themselves dinged through youthful high spirits so the odds aren't looking good between him and Dudley - I'm now reasonably certain he'll keep his end up.

We're now on the final leg, and I return to the officiant's position on the far side of the circle. Something tells me I should boost Harry's part in proceedings - it's not in the script, but I'm following the magic at least as much as the script at this point which I take as a good sign - so I bring Harry along to hand me the final three ingredients when their time comes.

"Genes, freely given! Give form to the new body!" I call out, and Harry hands me the cheek swab for me to levitate into the sarcophagus.

"Blood, bravely given! Give life to the new body!" Harry's right on his cue with the little phial, which I upend into the reagents. They start to swirl and faintly steam.

"Words, lovingly breathed! Give humanity to the new body!" Harry's bottle goes in last, and as I upend it and summon the cap back to my hand, the magic Harry has poured into it with his breath and voice actually visibly _sparkles._ A _very_ good sign.

I put the lid on, and concentrate _hard_ to tie it down tightly with sturdy linen ribbons on which runic spells are written. This is tricky work when you can't physically step closer than a metre and a half and have to do everything by telekinesis. Between the physical and magical effort and forty minutes in this heat, I feel like a bucket of wilted lettuce. Stepping out into the back garden, even on a bright hot upper-twenties summer day like the one we've got, feels beautifully refreshing.

Back inside the house Harry flops down into a chair at the kitchen table, and Mme. Flamel joins him. He offers her a lollipop, and she accepts the lime one with all due solemnity.

"Now it's just waiting seven nights. Sunrise next Saturday, it'll be done," I say. "Tea? Harry, milk?"

I get the drinks - I've laid in a supply of peppermint tea, because I know Mme Flamel likes it, and sort myself out with a brew of the regular stuff strong enough to float a brick in. We're making desultory conversation, Harry and I are a bit blown from the effort we've put in and our guest is being polite about it until we get our mental wind back (especially me, I think Harry's just a bit mindblown from the biggest, most impressive magic he's seen so far and will recover faster) when we hear the front door opening.

"Funny," I say, "Petunia's not due back for ages. The Zoo has only just closed and she's promised Dudley Pizzaland on the way home."

I rise and go into the hall. Framed in the front door is a tall figure in a long, dove-grey robes with lilac accents. With long silver hair about his shoulders and a beard gathered in a luminescent cloisonné ring at belt level, and a tasseled hat. I can't pick out much more detail, the light is behind him and Vernon's eyes haven't adjusted yet. Not that that is necessary: there can't be more than a few individuals answering that description and _only_ one that'd turn up _here_.

_Fuck me, it's Albus Bloody Dumbledore._

"Ah, Mr. Dursley," he says, and suddenly the blue of his eyes is fierce and bright, no matter the lack of light to see them by.

-oOo-

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

I could have said _much_ more about the soul-crushing tedium of the life of the junior lawyer sitting last in the list in a County Court waiting room. I included this bit because I read one too many massively dramatic trials in fanfics and wanted to put something out there by way of balance. Courtroom procedure is _boring_. Be thankful I didn't give you the proceedings in full.

The whole "How Much Is Harry Potter Worth" question is a very much vexed one in the fandom, isn't it? The figure I've chosen, on top of everything else I've settled on with regard to wizarding money, means there are between fifty and sixty thousand coins in Vault 687, enough to be 'mounds'. As to the shenanigans with his estate? This sort of thing used to happen _all the time_.

Sais (modern Sa el-Hagar, in Egypt) is the site of the oldest known medical school, the Temple of Neith (identified by Greek scholars with Isis/Athena). There are inscriptions attesting it as a school of what we'd now call obstetrics and gynaecology in particular, run by 'divine mothers'. It was old in Plato's time, and continued at least until the Fatimids invaded in the 7th Century.

The ritual is stitched together out of stuff from about half a dozen different magical traditions in addition to the obvious references to the dark arts version that appears in the books. Which is why you've got ancient egyptian 'power of the breath and voice' being spoken into a late-medieval/early modern English witch-bottle with a smoothie of pythagorean and qabbalistic numerology in a hermetic/abramelite workspace augmented with an old north-country butter-churning folkway and modern technomancy. Can you tell I'm having fun with this?

Finally, Cliffhanger. I'd apologise, but I'm not a _bit_ sorry.

Fanfic recommendation: Wind Shear by Chilord (on both FFN and AO3). It's a Harry-thrown-back-in-time story and an interesting look at wizarding society _before_ Voldemort manages to make a complete horlicks of everything. Some of the things he came up with inspired some of _my_ choices of how to build a working wizarding society. But I'm mainly recommending it for how much of an absolutely _ripping_ yarn it is.


	14. It's For The Greater Good

DISCLAIMER: Could the Death Eaters have won the war if they'd made all their personnel take a half-day course on basic prisoner-handling at any time before half way through Deathly Hallows? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

NOTE: I didn't realise this needed to be said, but there are appropriate spaces for online airing of sadomasochistic kinks and the reviews column of a Harry Potter Self-Insert Fanfic is _not one of them._ It's deleted now, but please don't do that again.

* * *

CHAPTER 14

_I rise and go into the hall. Framed in the front door is a tall figure in a long, dove-grey robes with lilac accents. With long silver hair about his shoulders and a beard gathered in a luminescent cloisonné ring at belt level, and a tasseled hat. I can't pick out much more detail, the light is behind him and Vernon's eyes haven't adjusted yet. Not that that is necessary: there can't be more than one individual answering that description and only one that'd turn up here._

Fuck me, it's Albus Bloody Dumbledore.

"_Ah, Mr. Dursley," he says, and suddenly the blue of his eyes is fierce and bright, no matter the lack of light to see them by._

-oOo-

That eye-shine - it's not a simple scan. It's a full-scale legilimentic _attack_.

It's suddenly very crowded in Vernon's head.

_The smell of macassar-oil. Father's belt. The noise of the souk at Tangier. Steel ripping through my chest. I'm sorry, the best we can do for poor Jessie is put her to sleep. The crunch of a breaking nose. I want a divorce. Arianna's dead, Albus, you killed her, you and your fucking sweetheart. I could have had you aborted, you little shit. I'm sorry, Albus, but there are things - I'm afraid it's a blackball -_

_**WHO'S THIS FUCKER?**_ Vernon's roaring in here.

_Deck him before he hurts Dudley,_ I manage to grind out, and then I'm throwing all of the grief and upset I can find at Dumbledore. Every tear and pang of heartache in vets' offices, courtrooms, by hospice beds and in A&E wards. Riddle was always shit at this particular kind of emotional attack, since he mostly didn't have emotions (although by the same token he was mostly immune). I, by contrast, am armed with a lifetime of mental illness to throw. It leaves Vernon free to -

_**What on earth -? **_Dumbledore's eyes go wide.

Vernon has covered the distance in three quick strides - I'm not in charge of this body's movement right now, I have BIGGER problems - and given Dumbldore a right feint and left uppercut combination that didn't connect _properly_ but rung the old git's bell. It stops the mental onslaught, so I take back control and grab and lock Dumbledore's wrist and use it to drop him on the doormat. (I know only _one_ formal martial arts move, but I _am_ good at it. Largely because it puts one's opponent in prime putting-the-boot-in position.) There's a hard shape under his sleeve that I feel as I'm giving him the choice between going down or having his elbow dislocated - his wand - and it's the work of an eye-blink to yank the thing out of its holster and toss it over my shoulder while planting Vernon's knee on the bearded face that's now being ground into the hall carpet.

I hear a sharply-snapped incantation in what I _think_ is Hebrew and Dumbledore goes limp under me.

"He'll be unconscious until I wake him," Mme Flamel says from behind me.

"I should resist the urge to give him a good kick in the fork, then, I suppose," I say, a little winded from the burst of speed Vernon put on. "Unsportin' if nowt else. Turns out wizards don't expect to get smacked in the teeth. Worth rememberin', that."

"Sam has said, for a long time, that you shouldn't overlook the possibilities inherent in just hitting the other fellow with a big stick. Crudity has its place, as he puts it."

I _knew_ I liked Sam Hartlib. "I don't think Dumbledore - this _is_ Dumbledore, isn't it?"

She nods.

"I think he expected to be attacking a muggle, not two minds in one head. So while I was dealing with him on the psychic front, Vernon was able to get close enough to lamp him one. Nearly knocked him out, too."

I've added that last for the benefit of Vernon, who's crowing about the whole thing. As well he might, it takes presence of mind to remember your training when it all goes wahoonie-shaped.

"How's Harry?" I ask as I grab Dumbledore under the armpits to drag him out of public view.

"I charmed him invisible and told him to hide. He went in that cupboard just there."

The cupboard under the stairs. So he's been driven back in there. _Thanks, Dumbledore._ "You can come out now, Harry!" I call out, and the door cracks open just a little bit.

"Is there a baddy still?" Harry says, only just above a whisper.

"Not any more. Your Uncle Vernon knocked him out. While I was fighting him with magic, Vernon punched him." And hurt his hand in the doing, by the feel. I'll ask Mme. Flamel to look at that in a bit.

"Cor!"

"Harry, go upstairs to the tent and in the non-magical stores you'll see a box with those white paper boiler suits in. Go bring one down for me, please."

"Righto!" Harry, eager to be helpful, goes off like a ferret up a trouser-leg. Mme. Flamel only _just_ catches him with the counter to her invisibility spell as he goes by.

"Boiler suit?" she asks as I'm hauling the surprisingly-scrawny but awkward to handle Albus Dumbledore into the living room.

"Basic custody discipline. Deprive the prisoner of anything that could be used for escape or self-harm."

"So we're stripping him."

"_I'm_ stripping him. Your involvement we should discuss and think carefully about, no? I mean, you're the most capable person in the vicinity by centuries of experience alone, but I want to think about the politics of this _before_ Albus wakes up and discovers that you, and by extension Nicolas and all the other alchemists, are involved."

Harry comes back in. "Got a suit. And I found this stick in the hallway! Is it a magic wand?"

"Yes it is, and you're too young to be holding it, Harry, put it down."

"Why?" He does, in fact, put it down, but it's a fair question.

"For the same reason you're not allowed to drive a car. You have to be old enough and you're not, yet. When you're ten, just before you go to magic school, if you've worked hard at normal school and eaten all your greens, we'll get you a wand of your own."

"Oh. Can we keep this one 'til then? I like how it feels."

"It's not ours to keep," I tell him, trying not to think about the possible consequences of giving a ten-year-old the Elder Wand to learn with, "and it's not the right sort of wand for schoolwork anyway."

"Oh. When I'm ten, though? I get my own?"

"_If_ you work hard at school and eat your greens, like I said. Now, do you think you can manage by yourself getting a shower and changed into normal clothes? We've finished all the magic science, and Madame Flamel and I need to have a grown-up talk with this baddy we caught."

Harry nods and dashes off. He likes doing things for himself, it shows what a Big Boy he is, and the showers in the tent are safety-charmed to a fare-thee-well.

Once he's gone, I heave Dumbledore on to the sofa and start unbuttoning and unfastening.

"Once you've got him stripped?" Flamel asks, in a tone of fascinated horror. Apparently she's used to a more … chivalrous standard of prisoner management.

"Tied to a chair. I want a _word_ with this bugger."

"The kind of _word_ that involves pincers and hot coals?"

"_No_. What made you think I was going to do anything that crass?"

"The way you said 'word'. When Sam takes that tone he generally goes on to remind me he was born in what historians are pleased to call the Dark Ages."

I can't help the snort of laughter. "I'm not saying he's about to have a comfortable experience, but torture wasn't my thing even _before_ I learned what a massive waste of time it was." There have been studies, proper peer-reviewed ones.

"Well, getting back to the point you raised earlier, my presence is neither here nor there, but I think we want Nicolas present while you question him."

"Why's that?"

"He's someone Albus would trust to vouch for you. Also, Nicolas is _much_ better at the binding magic you're going to need to keep Albus under control while you question him. Which will leave me free to keep young Harry safe and comforted."

"That _would_ be helpful, means I don't have to wait for Petunia to get back. And Harry likes you."

"Of course he does, I gave him lollipops. If I might use the telephone?"

"Of course," I say, "and when you've spoken to Nicolas I'm going to need a hand getting this on our guest." I hold up the boilersuit, white and shiny and rustling. Dumbledore is now as naked as the day he was born, his robes and effects piled on the coffee table.

"I think I'll help you with that _before_ I get on the phone. Not only will the poor thing catch his death like that, Harry might come down."

"Good heavens, yes. He's _not_ a pretty sight, is he?" Scrawny and hairy all over is the summary. Not bad shape for a centenarian, which I'd put down to the magic but I know of at least one muggle who was running marathons at 104. While we're getting the suit on him, I check on that scar over his left knee. It _might_ be the Underground, but it's the Underground from a _very_ long time ago. Most of the modern system is missing.

While she's on the phone I bring in one of the carver chairs from the dining room and lash Dumbledore into it securely.

While I'm waiting, I take a look at what I presume is the Elder Wand. It _does_ have the mark of the Hallows faintly incised on the butt end, amid the only carving of an elderberry motif on the thing (it's a lot plainer than the movie prop, as most wands seem to be. Mine's the fanciest I've seen yet.) It's long, slender, tapered to a businesslike point and slightly yellowed with age from the natural creamy-white of freshly-cut elder wood. With it in my hand, I get a sense of calculating, ruthless _approval_ and the feeling that it's happy to be in the hands of someone who is _actually_ dead. Not sure which is creepier.

It feels far more like a weapon than my own wand, or any of the ones I tried in Ollivander's shop. Sure, any wand can be turned to warlike use, but with this wand, the peaceable uses are strictly _secondary_, however well it may take to them. There may come a time when I need a wand for making war, but I'm not expecting that time to even _start_ before '91, and there's a non-zero chance we'll be able to head the bugger off entirely.

I _could_ hang on to it to keep it out of Dumbledore's hands, but I don't know the man well enough to say how he'd react. Giving it back to him would be safe until he connects me with the body cooking in the garage. If he _does - _he likely will, it's not going to be difficult to figure out from what I have planned for this meeting - I'll just have to hope that he doesn't administer _too_ serious a beat-down to get the wand's allegiance back. If he bothers at all, that is. He _did_ beat the last owner without it after all, and having the wand's allegiance obscured would fit with his stated aim of breaking its power. Although I have my doubts that it works that way.

I permit myself a small chuckle over the possibility that the wand is confused and that the current Master Of The Wand Of Destiny is actually Vernon Dursley. Unlikely, but _hilarious_ if true.

Mme. Flamel comes back from getting changed and checking on Harry - she has had to explain to him why we can't call the police - and relieves me on watch while I get cleaned up and changed.

"You were right to strip him," she says when I come down. Harry has the telly on upstairs and will be fine by himself for a bit.

"Oh?"

"Indeed. He brought a spare wand, two portkeys, a small case of potions, his spectacles are enchanted in some quite ridiculous ways, his watch is a portable magical surveyor as well as telling the time, and I could be here all night cataloguing the runes stitched into his underthings. Then there's _this_ thing that I'm entirely baffled by for the moment."

It looks like a big, chunky lighter. "It's a put-outer," I tell her, making an educated guess, "possibly _the_ put-outer if he only ever made the one. It's for putting out and reigniting lights. For when he needs temporary darkness for whatever he's up to." There may be more to it than that, of course, it did some additional things later on, but I'm hazy on the details.

She snorts, rather unladylike. "Ridiculous," she remarks. "There's a whole lot of other rubbish, but those were the potential risks." She's got the bag that Dumbledore's smart new boilersuit came in. A deft little bit of wand-work and she's got all his stuff sealed up in it, and a Sharpie from her inside pocket marks the bundle with cursive Hieratic script. "A spell of sealing," she says. "It won't last long in felt pen on plastic, but we shan't need all of the day or two it'll serve."

"Is M. Flamel able to come?"

"He is, and should be here shortly. Your hand, there - let me have a look at that."

"Just bruised, it feels like. If you can do something, I'd be obliged." It's almost certainly not broken, Vernon has boxer's knuckles that wouldn't have broken by just one glancing punch.

"You're right," she says, passing her wand over the outstretched hand, "A soothing charm -" she suits action to words - "and it'll be right as rain in an hour. If it's not, a cold compress and some paracetamol will sort you out by morning."

"Feels better already," I tell her. "Could you put a silencing charm around him, please? I'd like to be able to chat without the risk that he's shamming."

"Cautious; I approve," she says, lifting her wand and setting a shimmering circle in the air around Dumbledore's head. "Although I shouldn't fancy his chances of breaking that sleeping spell unaided. What do you hope to achieve when we wake him up?"

"Well, I have some questions, but I much misdoubt we'll get straight answers out of him and I don't have any truth serums handy. Not that I think they're much use, mere honesty still limits you to what you think to ask and as a trained lawyer, I _know_ just how much lying you can do without once saying anything untrue. I'd go with one of the friendliness potions and repeated obliviation and re-interviewing if we had time for it."

She outright laughs at that. "You've taken the time to think about it?"

"Used to be a boy scout, Madame. Be Prepared was the motto, and I try and live by it when I remember." I flop down on the sofa: Vernon's adrenaline is running its course and he's a little weary. And hungry. Speaking of which, "We should eat before we go to work on Dumbledore. I'm not up to offering you any more than takeaway, I'm afraid."

"Already taken care of, I told Nicolas to pick up enough Indian for the three of us, plus something mild for Harry. He will eat curry, won't he?"

"He's not a fussy eater, so long as there's not too much heat in it he'll be fine. I've cooked biryani for him and he liked that."

"Oh good, Nicolas will have picked some of that up, he knows I like it. Or, at least, the local takeaway version of it at any rate."

"Partial myself. Anyway. The main point of talking to Dumbledore - besides making good and sure he knows he's made a prize arse of himself tonight - is to get him on board if we can, and not interfering if we can't. I suspect it's going to mean the latter, because I can predict some of his likely responses to _me_ and how I've been working."

"Some _would_ say that possession raises ethical concerns, certainly."

"Oh, it does. But it's blatant hypocrisy coming from a wizard. They've all, as a culture, bought into the might-makes-right nonsense that led Albus to his current misfortune. Broke into Vernon's house and attacked him on sight, purely because he could and nobody, as he thought, could stop him. So, after we've let him make a revealing choice of lies and prevarications, we're going to play a little game I've devised called 'Messing with Albus Dumbledore'. He's a schemer, a manipulator and a planner, so if we throw enough complete bollocks at him we should at least give him decision paralysis. If not outright baffle him into cooperation."

"I rather think you're going to have to explain that."

I grin at her. "Seriously. It's one of the great fallacies of human reasoning, the long-range plan. The real world is _stochastic_, not a chessboard. Dumbledore will probably be trying to play chess, well, fine, but I'm crap at chess, so I'm playing _Mornington Crescent_."

She gets the reference, and chuckles briefly. "The tactics of the absurd. Appropriate, when dealing with wizards."

We nod at each other. The Trickster is a well-known archetype for a _reason_ and while you can never invoke it - some things you just don't speak the name of aloud if it at all matters - if you play it hard enough and sincerely enough, your opponent ends up with no idea whether it's Duck Season or Rabbit Season.

Nicolas Flamel arrives with two bags of gently steaming foil cartons. While the Flamels are helping Harry choose dishes to sample - Nicolas got a wide selection - Petunia gets home and asks me to carry Dudley in to bed, as he's spark out in the car. I get him upstairs and ready to be tucked in, and go back down to meet Petunia at the bottom of the stairs.

"The Flamels seem nice," she says, contriving to imply that she's not at all influenced by my having told her how legendarily rich they are, "but why do we have an unconscious old man in a boiler suit tied to a chair in the living room?"

The look on her face makes me thank all the powers that be for Petunia's desire not to cause a scene while we have company over, "That would be Albus Dumbledore, who broke in and tried to attack Vernon."

"What, _the_ Albus Dumbledore?"

"The same. While I was dealing with him magically, Vernon took over and thumped him across the jaw."

"Oh." She looks like she's going a little lightheaded.

"Once we've had a bite to eat, we're going to give him a hearty bollocking for everything he's dumped on you and Vernon, among other things."

"You look like you're set up to interrogate him!"

"Well, we'll ask him some questions, but I don't really care overmuch what the answers will be. We're going to rather lay down the law with him about what he can and can't do, which nobody _has,_ or at least not recently judging from the way he behaved."

"And you say Vernon's already punched him in the face?"

"Yes."

"I suppose it would be going too far for me to give him a slap as well?"

"Rather, I'm afraid." Although, you know, _tempting._

"Well, good luck. I'll get some pyjamas on Dudley, read him a story if he wakes up, and read quietly in bed while you get on with it. How's Harry?"

"He's had a whale of a time today, and I believe he's getting his bedtime story from Madame Flamel tonight, while Monsieur Flamel helps me with Dumbledore. We'll have him out of the house and everything cleaned up before you're up in the morning."

"Good. Good night, if I'm asleep when you bring Vernon up."

-oOo-

Nicolas Flamel may just be the most genial and affable human being I have _ever met_. Also, he looks at least a decade older than his wife despite being almost certainly several centuries younger. After dinner, and while I'm leaving Harry in his wife's capable hands for bedtime drills, he busies himself with drawing a magical geometry and a runic spell - Linear A, which I can recognise but not read - around the chair I tied Dumbledore to.

"How long will that contain him?" I ask.

"As long as we need. Unless Albus has learned Mycenean, which I don't think he has by the way, in which case he would need perhaps half an hour undistracted to get through this without his wand."

"I'm thinking of blindfolding him before he wakes up anyway, purely to stop him trying legilimency while we're talking."

"Not through this, he won't."

"Ah."

"Well, we're in business. I've applied a catheterisation charm and some cushioning charms to ensure he's comfortable, and intubated a mild calming potion into him. He's capable of being quite hot-headed, so I thought it wise to forestall the possibility of any abreaction." Nicolas Flamel: genial, affable, and _scary_. He said that in the same cheerful slightly-French-accented tone he'd used earlier to ask I'd care for another bhaji.

"Good idea. Shall we begin?" I'm probably coming off as rather more calm than is really the case. Albus Dumbledore has the potential to be truly dangerous, little though he's apt to use it, and he has a lot of people with the propensity to follow his orders without question. Vernon, however, wants to punch him again, and the effort to keep _that_ under control is forcing me to be focussed and a bit poker-faced.

Flamel nods, flourishes his wand and incants in probably-hebrew.

"Albus Dumbledore," I say as I see him begin to stir, "it comes to something when you can fail a test of character nobody has even _set_. Would you care to explain why your actions this evening included breaking and entering and an unprovoked attack on a man who, as far as you knew, was a defenceless muggle?"

There's a pregnant pause. I can see his eyes twinkling as he tries legilimency. Nicolas is behind him, so his attention is fixed on me. "Harry. What have you done with him, whoever you are?"

"Well, most recently," I drawl out, "I made sure he'd brushed his teeth after the hearty dinner he had, and put him to bed. Right about now Madame Flamel is reading him a bedtime story."

"Fox in Socks," Nicolas adds. "_Most_ charming. I shall have to buy a copy of my own. Socks on chicks and chicks on fox! Delightful stuff!" Like he hasn't just forcibly medicated a bound prisoner.

I smile at Dumbledore. "I asked an entirely civil question, you know. And while I've answered yours, you haven't answered mine. You came into this house and committed actual _crimes_, surely you want to put your side of the story on the record?"

"Is that you, Nicolas?"

"It is, Albus, and I should very much like to hear your answer to Mister Reynolds' question. I knew you were a trifle hot-headed and high-handed, but this does seem a bit much even for you."

"Who is Mister Reynolds, Nicolas?"

"Ah-ah, Albus. You first."

"I have reason to believe that Harry Potter, who I placed in this house five years ago, may have been robbed of his inheritance. I came to investigate."

_Oh, for fuck's_ _sake_. I hold up a hand to ask Flamel to let me take this one. "Still not an answer, Mister Dumbledore. And for your general fund of information, the embezzlement from Harry's inheritance happened nearly five years ago, _and we know about your complicity in it._ If you're referring to Harry's Gringotts vault closing, that was the final stage in putting the child's patrimony under competent professional management and away from even the _possibility_ of the thieves getting at it again. As it happens, I made up the loss you're responsible for out of my own money."

"What do you mean, _complicity?"_ Dumbledore's putting on a good display of whisker-bristling outrage at my accusation. He might actually be sincere, of course, not that I give a shit. Negligence is just as culpable as dishonesty.

"You handed an orphan child's inheritance over to his enemies for administration. What did you _think_ they were going to do? As I say, _complicity._ And _still_ giving no valid account of your actions here this evening, Mister Dumbledore."

"The ministry handles estates, what I did was _proper_ \- "

"Complicity by culpable ignorance, then," I drive over his spluttering excuses. "The office of the Seventh Clerk is the administrator of _last resort_, Mister Dumbledore, did you not take the ten minutes required to have an actual lawyer inform you of that fact? Not have even _one_ trustworthy acquaintance who might have stepped in as a friend of the family, however thin the fiction might have been? What you did was _lawful_, but don't insult me with the suggestion that you thought it was _right._ No man your age is that naive. And _again_, and if you don't answer this time I will presume your motives this evening were entirely criminal and call for the assistance of Magical Law Enforcement, why did you break and enter as a trespasser in this house and magically assault what you clearly _thought_ was the muggle Vernon Dursley?"

Silence. Which he should have been doing from the start, really. I'm finding it slightly amusing being on this side of the interview, most of my previous experience of this sort of thing was sitting next to a sweating suspect who just wanted to get his police bail and go home.

I keep the silence up. I moved the clock on the mantel to a position behind Dumbledore, I don't want him knowing the time. He surely knows the 'let the other guy fill the silence' trick. Thing is, I know it too. He gets to a few seconds past two minutes. Clearly he's unused to not being in a clear position of power and authority and I rather think he's all at sea.

"The ministry handled my father's estate." He's speaking in a small voice, suddenly sounding all of his years old. "I thought that was standard practise. And when Gringotts wrote to say the vault was closing I jumped to the conclusion that the Dursleys had found a way to embezzle the contents. So I resolved to -"

"_Jumped_ to the conclusion, Mister Dumbledore? The vault closed ten days ago, even with a slow owl you've known for over a week. That's a _leisurely_ jump."

"I had to inquire at Gringotts, they told me that Harry's guardians had a muggle court order to close the vault and remove the funds."

"That ten minute appointment took you a _week and a half_ to arrange? No, don't bother answering that, I won't learn _anything_ from whatever lie you concoct. The problem, here, Albus Dumbledore," I tell him, leaning forward in the armchair I'm interviewing him from, "is that you are a considerable practitioner of the rarefied and advanced forms of stupidity open only to the highly intelligent. The main one of which is assuming that if you don't know a thing, nobody else could possibly know more. When I intervened in this family, which they were in crying need of by the way, Vernon Dursley was on the brink of full-blown suicidal ideation, Petunia Dursley not far from a complete breakdown, and _both_ children were being sorely mistreated. _They were keeping Harry in a cupboard and that was only the most prominent of their abuses._ Since then, I have spent eleven months and considerable sums of my own money - not a penny of which I begrudge - correcting your many and grievous sins against Harry. Most of the things I have done have been, bluntly, finding an appropriate expert and engaging their services. A lawyer, a private inquiry agent, medical professionals, an optician, teachers, bankers, accountants, fund managers, and as you may have gathered from Monsieur and Madame Flamel's presence, even alchemists. _Because I am not stupid enough to think I know everything._"

Behind Dumbledore Flamel has his knuckles in his mouth and is shaking silently; I don't know which bit has him so amused, and it may just be something I'm not even privy to. It's a bit disconcerting, I'm trying to keep up my countenance of peppery, sarcastic disdain. Still, I'm on a roll and I don't want Dumbledore to get started on whatever he's thinking of to say.

"Shall I recount your sins, Mister Dumbledore? I think I shall. Let us begin with notifying a woman of her sister's death without detail, without sympathy, without even the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting. Let us continue with phrasing that notification in impersonal tones that make a _tax demand_ look like a _love-letter_. Let us add that this was delivered to her doorstep along with the morning milk _and a fifteen-month-old orphan child_. Whose welfare you took not the slightest care over from that day to this, I might add. You disregarded _every last one_ of the proper legal steps to transfer care, residence and formal guardianship to Petunia Dursley of her last remaining blood family, and intimidated the poor woman into doing none of it herself by threatening her with unspecified dire consequences if she did not maintain secrecy."

This is, while over-egging it a bit, not an entirely inaccurate characterisation of the letter Dumbledore left with Harry in the small hours of November 2nd, 1981. The most charitable explanation is that he's a complete fucking idiot with the approximate human empathy of a saltwater crocodile. The _second _most charitable is that he's a bigot who doesn't think muggles' emotions count, not properly.

I don't pause, of course. I've been composing this speech for a while and I'm not letting the old bleeder interrupt. "Then, having made misleading public statements about what you did - not such a great sin, Harry's location _did_ need to be protected - you failed to seek competent advice, as you had assumed a duty to do, and handed Harry's inheritance over to a Ministry office headed by a close relative of one of Tom Riddle's known associates from his Hogwarts days. I ask again, rhetorically, what you _thought_ they'd do? For your general fund of information, you cost the Potter estate considerably more than a hundred thousand galleons, a sum that rises daily as the lost income mounts up."

"But-"

"AH!" I stop him with an upraised hand. "There is more. Having made a perfect horlicks of the situation so far, you then cast mind-altering enchantments on the house where you placed a vulnerable orphan child in the care of people who were already in poor mental health. You may count yourself fortunate that nobody had a violent psychotic episode. Harry is lucky to be _alive_."

"I didn't know - " he wails. He's been looking more and more distressed. Point _against_ the Evil Dumbledore theory. Which, fair enough, was always unlikely under the stupidity-before-malice rubric. Although he maybe should have fucking _listened _when Minerva McGonnagall told him there was something wrong under this roof.

"BECAUSE YOU NEGLIGENTLY FAILED TO MAKE ANY ENQUIRY." I let a bit of Vernon's temper out with that. Vernon is actually quite wakeful at the moment, and his choler has been rising as I give Dumbledore the Opening For the Prosecution. "You took on a duty to care for that child, Albus Dumbledore, and you have been _failing_ since the very first day. Except in so far as you have been making things _worse_ for the poor boy, you have five years of culpable inaction to account for. And I've only been recounting the absolute basics, here. The merest necessities of the child's welfare. Perhaps I could understand not inviting Petunia to her sister's funeral - security was at a premium - but not sending word of where the grave was? How was Harry to be taken to pay his respects once he was old enough to understand, even if you took the bigoted view that Lily's sister didn't count as a mere muggle? What of his parents' personal effects did you secure, that he might have something to remember them by, once he was old enough to understand? Nothing. And don't try and give me any excuses on that last part, Dumbledore, we found the records from the Ministry about how they were sold as a job lot to contribute all of three galleons seven-and-ten to the liquidation of the estate. The whole of an affluent family's clothing and housewares for that sum? There was a Knockturn Alley shonky shop marked _that_ as a red letter day, I imagine. Albus Dumbledore, you were _complicit in that_. Getting keepsakes of his parents for an orphan child is so basic it doesn't even count as _common_ _decency_ \- and you didn't do it. Did you even _mention_ it to anyone else? I can't imagine you wouldn't have had volunteers. _Foundlings_ get more care for their feelings than you showed Harry."

I let him have a few seconds to stew on that one, it's the one _I'm_ angriest about. "The measure of your negligence, Albus Dumbledore, your culpable, _life-threatening, entirely heartless_ negligence, is that I, someone of whom you know less than nothing, have been intervening to clean up your mess for nearly a year and the first you knew about it was when the _goblins_ wrote to you."

"Who _are_ you," he breathes, "Some relative of Vernon Dursley?"

I notice that Perenelle has come in. Dumbledore hasn't seen her - we situated his chair carefully - and she directs a very speaking give-me-strength look to the heavens. "Albus," she says, "that _is_ Mr. Dursley. And also Mr. Reynolds. And I have cast soundproofing charms, the boys are both asleep and it would be a shame to curtail Mr. Reynolds' oratory even a little bit. I'm rather enjoying it."

"Perenelle? Who is he? I had no report of anyone intervening?"

"I owe you that bottle, Reynolds," she says.

"What?" Dumbledore's confused.

"I bet her," I say, "that you were having the place watched and you were ignoring the reports. And that you'd admit as much when interviewed, confirming that it wasn't just failure in your duty but _knowing_ failure. Madame Flamel, I'm partial to Barolo, but really any bold, hefty red I can enjoy with a rare steak will suit."

"I shall speak to my vintner. Albus missed the revelation, though." Perenelle has a hand to her forehead, clutching her temples as she speaks. Eye-rolling is considerably after her time.

"He did, didn't he?"

Nicolas steps out into the hall, apparently in danger of actually _giggling_.

"What -" Dumbledore stops to think back over what was said. "How can you be _both_ Reynolds and Dursley?"

She takes a lecturing tone with him, "Mister Reynolds, Albus, is here in spirit form. Think of him as little Harry's guardian angel. Harry certainly does. Translating liberally from the little-boy-ese, of course."

_I can imagine_. _Magic Jedi Ghost Daddy would be just the start of it._ "The essence of the thing, Dumbledore, is that on Harry's fifth birthday I was _borne_ here on the winds of fate to find a child weeping in despair. I have acted through, and to the considerable benefit of, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, rescuing them from the moral _bog_ in which they were sinking under the weight of your incompetence. With the Flamels' help I will soon have suitable flesh with which to act in the corporeal world and will be able to let the Dursleys live their own lives. I sought them out when I realised I would require an ethically-sourced homunculus. Monsieur and Madame Flamel, you have been most helpful and I am _considerably_ obliged. Vernon will be happy to get his life back ahead of the original schedule we projected."

"You're _possessing_ that poor man!" Albus Dumbledore: Master Of The Bleeding Obvious.

I can't sigh out loud. He's shown no sign of spotting the hint I dropped, but no matter, he has a pensieve. He'll catch it on a second viewing, I hope. "Yes. It's not, entertainingly enough, illegal. Largely, I suspect, because so few are capable of it while also being subject to the Ministry's jurisdiction. Which, by the way, I'm not, since I'm not actually a wizard. Spirit, remember?"

"And alchemist, if you take up Mr. Hartlib's offer," Perenelle adds.

I nod. "I'm seriously considering it, but I _do_ have a lot of learning to do before I can in all good conscience put myself forward as any kind of prospect."

"You're _possessing_ him!" Dumbledore's tone has grown a little more heated. He's been taking a fair old beating so far in this conversation, he probably wants at least _some_ balance in the exchange of allegations.

I return my attention to our prisoner. "You do rather seem to have got stuck on that, don't you, Dumbledore? Vernon's next of kin consented on his behalf. She wants her husband to have a reasonable chance of seeing his fiftieth birthday, you see, which your meddling was denying him. The last eleven months have been a rest cure for Vernon's mind and a considerable improvement in his physical health. He's lost a bit over six stone in the last year, felt the benefits of regular exercise, discovered a whole new hobby, earned the approval of his doctor and dropped his golf handicap by three whole strokes. He has a better relationship with his son, an _actual_ relationship with his foster-son, the esteem of his neighbours and greater approbation from the wider community. His sister telephones him regularly with updates on her recovery from her alcoholism - crediting him with the impetus to get treatment - and he's had a raise in his salary. On the whole, I'd say I've pulled my weight as skipper of the good ship Vernon Dursley. I dare say I might even have done more for him, but I was rather busy remedying your utter, utter dereliction of duty."

"Perenelle, surely you haven't been taken in by this creature's blandishments?"

"I've had ample opportunity to examine him, Albus. He seems to be a decent sort and doing well enough by the children in this house that I wouldn't care to criticise his methods overmuch, especially since he's taking pains to do as little harm as he can and even bring some benefit to the Dursleys. And I can assure you, I've been blandished by better than him and resisted. Tell me, are you jealous that Hartlib wants him for the College after he blackballed _you_?"

"What?"

"It's a fair question, Albus. You're not nearly naive enough to deny that sometimes we have to do distasteful things to protect the innocent, you certainly don't have the sheer brass neck to suggest that Harry's welfare was at all being looked after, so I can only presume that you're harping on the possession thing out of jealousy."

"Perenelle!"

"After what I've heard over the last few months, perhaps it ought to be Madame Flamel to you, hmm?"

"He's possessing the man, whatever my errors, you must see that that is the act of a dark spirit -"

"What I must see, Albus, is that you're in custody as a result of what amounts to common burglary on the muggle side and muggle-baiting on the magical and you're looking for any mud to throw to shift the balance of prejudice. Although jealousy does seem rather more in your character, based on our brief few decades' acquaintance."

"Don't exert yourself on my account, Madame," I say, "it's not like he's going to tell anyone, is it? Given what he'd have to publicly admit in order to make the report to anyone. Or what would inevitably come out if he tried to make some kind of anonymous tip. The point, Mister Dumbledore, is that at every stage of this interview, you have been offered tests of character. Of, bluntly, fitness to have any involvement in the life of a child. You have failed every last one. This after failing five years of such tests, following which you damned yourself by only actually trying to discharge your duty over the money remaining after the embezzlement you connived at."

"I -"

"Oh _do_ shut up," I tell him, "I might care to hear your side at some point, but not tonight. There are more important matters to discuss. Such as what you know about the prophecy that some inconsiderate arse has crapped in Harry's future time stream."

"How do you know about that?" He snaps, without apparently thinking about it. Yeah, we've got him _good_ and rattled. That was a _schoolboy_ error.

"Ah, so you do know about it." I hold up a hand. "Don't, on pain of being punched in the face again, tell me the wording. If I don't hear it, I can't be affected by it. If you try and blurt it out, I'll ask Monsieur Flamel to charm the memory away after you leave."

He's got the most _beautifully_ confused look on his face.

"For your general fund of information, Mister Dumbledore, while I do remember life as a mortal man - father to three children who I raised to prosperous adulthood, which is why I take such offence at your negligence in Harry's case - I am now possessed of capabilities you cannot possibly comprehend or _know_. One such capability is taking an external, non-subjective view of time," I have to apply _heroic_ levels of resistance to avoid referring to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, "and to be outside time is to know such things exist. To avoid entanglement in them, however, is just _common sense._"

Again, I don't care if Dumbledore catches on right away, he's got a pensieve. Giving him further cause to doubt in his own righteousness seems like the thing here in the heat of the moment. I was already going to give him shit for treating prophecy as valid - it might be, but on the historical and mythological record they usually seem to be more of a prompt for disastrous decisions than any kind of forecast of future events. (see: mothers, accidental carnal knowledge of) Adding in a hint that _he's_ the dark lord of the prophecy, not Tom, is a spur-of-the moment improvisation. I really shouldn't do this sort of thing, but the words were out of my mouth as soon as the inspiration struck.

Dumbledore remains silent for a moment. Then, "Voldemort knows the first two lines."

I nod. "Implying it wasn't made directly to him, and that whoever it _was_ made to allowed it to leak. Despite literal millennia of bad press about what happens when oracular pronouncements get out into the wild. Is there another line of red in your ledger, Mister Dumbledore?" I'm pretty sure there _is_. There's a deep, disturbing _problem_ with the books' account of how Snape heard the first two lines of the prophecy, namely that Trelawney _remembered it happening_. Either Snape heard it all or that incident was _staged_.

"I didn't know what I had on my hands at first. _I thought she was shamming to get the job._" There's a desperate tone in his voice. All that condemnation I heaped on him, and _this_ is the point where he realises he fucked up? He goes on, "I didn't realise until the Department of Mysteries started making enquiries. They detect them somehow, send people out to record them." If he thought she was shamming, dumping disinformation within hearing of a known enemy agent isn't actually a bad move. No moral weight comes off Dumbledore, of course, since the obvious reading of those first two lines directly targets _children_.

"Well," I say, "it would probably be for the best if they could be persuaded to lose that record somehow. Or replace it with a dirty limerick or two."

"But the prediction is made - surely - oh. You, too, fear that Voldemort is not entirely gone."

"I _know_ he isn't gone, Dumbledore. Among the many things you overlooked was that he was unstable enough that his discorporation spawned a shade that clung to little Harry. Implying that he's done something monstrous to keep him from passing on. Whatever the Potters did to protect their son that night kept him safe, but if that protection had failed? You'd have a rising Dark Lord in the skin of a boy hailed as a national hero. A _second_ dark lord, at that, since I'm fairly certain it was a copy of an original that is still out there somewhere."

Dumbledore looks poleaxed. "Then you know the poor boy's eventual fate?"

I look him dead in the eye. "Well, in the immediate future his fate is to have fun at his foster-brother's sixth birthday party, at which he will enjoy silly games and far too much of the suckling pig I'll be barbecuing. Tell me, Albus Dumbledore, were you thinking that the presence of that thing meant the boy had to die before he'd lived a full span of years?"

"Yes?" _In which Albus admits he knew there was a problem_. _At some point I'm going to find out why he did nothing, even if I have to beat it out of him with his own shoes._

"And who did you consult to confirm that? To, perhaps, rule out any _possible_ method of exorcising the child?"

"There is nobody. Nobody with such knowledge of the dark that could be trusted."

"Sure of that, are you? Made full and searching enquiries? Made at least _some_ enquiries? Asked some bloke down the pub? _Anything_?"

He stays silent. From the look on his face he's only spotting the flaw in his thinking now he's come to speak it aloud. Especially in _this_ company.

"Bit of a theme with you, isn't it, Mister Dumbledore? The high-handed assumption that if you don't know a thing, it can't be known by anyone? That nobody but you can resist the moral hazard of knowing about the darkness? If it helps your conscience any, and christ knows it clearly _needs_ help, Harry has been free of the taint since the second day after my arrival. It's amazing what you can do if the alternative is letting an innocent child die," especially if you have the unalloyed faith of said innocent child lending strength to your arm. Tom _really_ pissed on his chips by trying conclusions with me in _that _context, "and you're not, you know, so far up yourself you take your own ignorance and _raging self-absorption_ as laws of nature."

Madame Flamel breaks the ensuing silence. "I think I can speak for my husband when I say we're both _very_ disappointed in you, Albus. Did you think we would have stayed our hands in the search for a remedy, had you asked? We have centuries between us, _boy_. Add in the colleagues who would be glad to consult and the total experience rises to millennia. I'm sure we'd have found at least a few promising approaches to the problem. What in your paltry hundred years have _you,_ to set against such a weight of learning? Hmm?"

"I felt it best to maintain secrecy," he says.

"It's a reason, at least," she answers him, coming around to look him in the face. "But not a very good one. What made you doubt our discretion?"

A long pause. "I can offer no excuse," he says, eventually, sagging in his seat. "With hindsight, I ought to have swallowed my pride. I have presumed often enough on Nicolas's help and only been disappointed once, after all."

"I am glad to hear you recognise _that_ at long last."

While I _really_ want to hear the gossip behind that little exchange - and to follow up on that whole 'blackball' thing from earlier because oh my _word_ that sounds like it's _juicy_ \- I'm aware that it's getting late. "Be that as it may, Harry's safe for the time being. We have the protections Lily crafted for him and for this house, we have resources sufficient to any reasonable task ahead of us, and I hope the confident expectation that you will be sharing any intelligence of Tom Riddle's imminent return, should any come up?"

Dumbledore nods at that. "All is quiet, none of my informants have reported anything. For my own part I have been searching for ways he might have secured his hold on life."

"Un-death," I correct him. "I've reason to suspect that despite the psychological continuity with Tom Riddle, the entity that has been cutting about calling itself Voldemort isn't the original human soul. Whatever he did to try for immortality, it destroyed and replaced the original, or at least warped it beyond recognition. I was able to pick through the remains of the copy that was trying to possess Harry. Whatever it was, it wasn't _human_ the way I, for instance, still am." Overselling Tom's abhumanity a bit: while there's no formal psychiatric diagnosis of 'complete arsehole' it _is _part of the great panorama of human character.

"What could do such a thing?" I'm pleased to note he's not disputing my humanity, but that could just be mere oversight in the heat of the moment.

I shrug. "He was after immortality, and that's the kind of bait that is set for the greatest of transgressions. I'd go looking for something that requires a heavy sacrifice, possibly full human sacrifice. It would explain the abhuman taint, too, since anything that demands human sacrifice and pays for it with soul meddling is likely to warp the petitioner into the bargain. Have you checked with those who taught him while he was at Hogwarts? They may have disciplined him for having unsavoury research material in his possession, for instance." I can't come right out and tell him to go ask Slughorn about horcruxes, Dumbledore is already chary of me over the whole possession thing. He'll want to know how I know, and if I suggest that I'm in any way tainted by the _anima_ of Tom Marvolo Riddle he'll do his nut _completely_. "Whatever you find, share. What has been done can be undone, that much is axiomatic, but it's unlikely to be easy. Mistrust of allies and refusal to delegate and cooperate should be the other side's problem, not ours."

Dumbledore's eyes narrow at that last. "I notice," he says, "that I appear to have been stripped and _tied to a chair_. Could we perhaps revisit the point about mistrust of allies in _that_ context?"

I give him a beatific smile. "You entered as a trespasser in order to commit assault, Mister Dumbledore. The very _definition_ of burglary. This after we discovered a whole _catalogue_ of errors and omissions on your part, some of which potentially had quite sinister explanations. Now, you've been somewhat more reasonable in the last little while, but up until this point I had no good reason to believe you an ally and some compelling evidence to the contrary. Our little chat, with the very welcome assistance of Madame Flamel here in pounding sense into your exceptionally hard head, suggests that we might well be able to work together. But you have made a number of serious errors, and I took the view that if we didn't rub your nose in it when you disgraced yourself on the hall rug, you wouldn't learn not to do it again. Be grateful there are children in the house: if not for their presence you wouldn't have even had the comfort of that boiler suit you're wearing. Which I don't want back, by the way."

Nicolas has to step out of the room again, and Dumbledore starts to look positively _pissy_ at me.

"Feel free to be angry at me," I tell him, "I find myself thoroughly able to bear your ill-regard so long as you don't compromise Harry's welfare any further than you already have."

"What would you have of me, then, _spirit?_"

"Two things. First, you're going to correct a miscarriage of justice. I was able to visit the moment of the Potters' deaths in the course of being sent here, and converse with them briefly. That prompted some consequent investigations, but I don't have enough presence in the wizarding world to follow through properly. Apparently Sirius Black was sent down for betraying them?"

"And murdering Peter Pettigrew, yes. The tale was a considerable scandal at the time, we were all horrified at how misplaced our trust was."

"You'll be all the more horrified to learn that Pettigrew isn't actually dead, and framed Mr. Black for the betrayal. I'm afraid the Potters outsmarted themselves and changed their security arrangements without telling anyone." I hope. One of the Evil Dumbledore theories is that he _knew_ about the switch in Secret Keepers. "Pettigrew was made the only one able to betray them under the terms of the magic protecting them, and he wasn't so much a weak link as a false one. Pettigrew is at large right now, dark mark and all. He's an animagus, taking the form of a common brown rat. Posing as a child's pet, of all things. Can't tell you the name of the kid, beyond that he's a redhead male living somewhere in the west country and has older siblings at Hogwarts. Catch the rat, beat a confession out of him, get Black's trial conviction reversed. Can't be a murderer if the victim isn't dead and a confession from the _real_ accessory to the Potters' murders should sort out _that_ charge, with time unjustly served accounting for whatever other sins landed him in chokey. You're well placed to deal with it, and the political fallout, and I have foreseen that Mr. Black's liberty is _critical_ to timely progress in making Tom Riddle die all the way dead."

"How?"

I rock a hand. "Not so sure yet. Always in motion, the future. Constantly branching with every choice, any seer who tells you there's a _certainty_ in your future is selling something. There are a lot of good outcomes that become possible with Black's early exoneration, though. And it saws off the branches that lead to some fairly horrible ones. Net: strong positive, to a high degree of confidence. Plus, it's the kind of thing that reassures everyone that you're a stand-up guy with worthwhile principles, the backbone to stand up for them, and the skills and drills to actually do something about them. Kind of chap you might actually permit a role in the life of a little boy you care about, know what I mean?"

He ruminates a moment. If he's done his homework, he knows that the Dursleys are now Harry's lawful guardians and could send him to, say, Ilvermorny. Or some other wizarding school that Voldemort doesn't have hangups about. I can't overtly threaten, that'd make him dig his heels in, but he's old and canny enough to take a _verbum sap._ "I will investigate. If I find a rat animagus where you say I will - your description fits a conveniently small number of households, all of which will offer me at least tea if I visit - then I shall quickly learn if there is an innocent man in Azkaban. As you say, a miscarriage of justice."

I nod. "My willingness to both trust you and consider you reliable rather depend on a successful outcome. You have given scant cause for confidence to date, I'm sorry to say."

"You mentioned a second thing?"

"You need to add a student to Hogwarts' rolls for the academic year starting September '91. Malcolm Reynolds, no middle name, born 30th September 1979." A little discreet spellwork - Tom had picked up the method while working at Borgin & Burkes as part of their work forging provenances for stolen artefacts - added a couple of entries to the central Register of Births at St. Catherine's House. It's a tiny little piece of ritual magic that you have to do on the premises - I hid in the loo for ten minutes with a slate, chalk, candle and a phial of secretary-bird plumes - but remarkably easy on records that don't have a defence against it. The entries at the corresponding local registry office are missing, but it'll be _years_ before they finish computerising and the discrepancy will be corrected by _adding _the local record rather than treating the central one as spurious. I now have birth certificates proving that I'm both six and twenty-five. All I have to do is pass a driving test, apply for a passport, and sit a few O-levels and I'll have identities that will stand up nicely to 1980s standards. I'm already ahead of the game with a bank account and money, of course.

"You mentioned needing a homunculus earlier," Dumbledore says, his eyes narrowing, "I mislike the idea of an adult returning to Hogwarts to live among children in that way."

I'd been _hoping_ he wouldn't make the connection, but trying to deny it would be counterproductive, and actually _more_ counterproductive if it worked now and was discovered later. Still, I planned for this. "I'm not returning: I never attended Hogwarts in the first place. All of my education prior to coming here was nonmagical. I acquired magic post-mortem, and before you ask I am not telling you how that came about. Speculate on your own time whether that is cannot, will not, or may not. I have been cramming non-stop to be able to follow what the Flamels have been helping me with, but I do still need a basic magical education. In addition to the funding - I understand the ministry subsidy is per head, although I can pay direct if that's easier - you'll have an additional adult on the premises, albeit hidden in the form of a child. Your choice how much you share with your staff, but I recommend an ace-in-the-hole policy. Harry having someone secretly watching his back is a necessity with that prophecy loose. Events will _converge_ on the poor boy."

Dumbledore nods. I'm selling it to him as all but getting a buckshee member of staff if he lets me in, and it's not like he can't give backword if things turn sour between now and '91. Although if _that_ happens Harry isn't going to Hogwarts _either_, and I better make sure that Dumbledore gets regular updates on how well Harry's doing learning French. After a moment or two of contemplation, he says, "I take your point. How far did your nonmagical education go, if I may ask?"

"Postgraduate qualifications, plural. I'll be able to handle a secondary school curriculum, additional independent study _and_ helping the real children with their education and personal problems and probably still have time for larking about a bit, frankly. Purely to maintain my cover, you understand."

"It is not given to many to revisit their youth." Dumbledore's actually smiling at me, the arse. Like he'll be doing me a favour.

I laugh out loud at that. "If it weren't for the dire need, I wouldn't be. I'm going to be subjecting myself to several years of teenage dramatics _and_ going through puberty a second time, as if once wasn't bloody awful enough. You may have to turn a blind eye to me sneaking out every so often with a bottle of aging potion just for respite's sake."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Goodness, it feels good to get that out of the way. I've probably missed _loads_ of Dumbledore's errors in that screed, but this is already a long chapter which is why I'm keeping the notes brief.

I've built the characterisation of Nicolas Flamel from the recorded history of the man and the Crimes of Grindelwald movie: really nice chap, until the chips are down and then BAM! In charge and kicking arse. Nice, but scary. Perenelle Flamel is a blank slate in history, books and movies alike, so I've taken a liberty or two. There _should_ be enough clues now for you to guess which famous historical alchemist she actually _is_, with a fifty-fifty chance of being right.

Mornington Crescent is the flagship game on _I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue._ Those that get it, get it. Those that don't, don't.

Fanfic recommendation: Dudley's Memories by paganaidd, available on FFN and AO3 alike. The sequels whitewash Snape rather more than is my taste, but the first story? Beautiful.


	15. Resurgam

DISCLAIMER: Is the one character who takes the threats and dangers of the magical world seriously treated as a joke by everyone else in the potterverse? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 15

"_It is not given to many to revisit their youth." Dumbledore's actually smiling at me, the arse. Like he'll be doing me a favour._

_I laugh out loud at that. "If it weren't for the dire need, I wouldn't be. I'm going to be subjecting myself to several years of teenage dramatics and going through puberty a second time, as if once wasn't bloody awful enough. You may have to turn a blind eye to me sneaking out every so often with a bottle of aging potion just for respite's sake."_

-oOo-

It takes another scolding from Madame Flamel to get Dumbledore out of the house, still in the boiler suit. She'd got Harry to sleep despite all the excitement and she was _not_ for letting Dumbledore go up and disturb him. It may be centuries since she was last a mother, but it's like riding a bike. Dumbledore apparates from the driveway, giving the muggleworthiness spells what I hope is their last workout of the day. There are plenty of people out and about even this close to sunset, so a skinny old wizard in a too-small boilersuit, disapparating in plain sight, is a bit of a challenge to the magic. It doesn't surprise me to learn that he burnt a few of the rune-parchments out altogether. Annoying: those things aren't cheap.

"That was less trouble than I was expecting," Nicolas observes as I close the front door and breathe a huge sigh of relief. From the kitchen I can hear the kettle coming to a boil, so we join Perenelle there for tea.

"Home field advantage," I remark.

"Oh?" They both bid me go on in near-perfect unison. What six centuries of marriage will do for you, that.

"Harry's mother invoked an absolute _monster_ of a really old protective spell on this house before she died, and it's almost certainly got the standard 'confusion and misfortune to the enemy' bit in it. At a guess, Dumbledore didn't realise he wasn't exempt from that, even though he monkeyed with it when he dropped Harry off here. His decision-making will have been compromised as soon as he settled an intention to attack here, as well as his luck turning sour."

The Flamels share a look. Quite a long one, giving me quite the excluded feeling as they have a silent conversation.

It's Madame Flamel who speaks first. "_Defensor Patriae_, were I to venture a guess," she says, "how much analysis have you done?"

"I'll get the file," I tell her, stepping into the dining room to pick it up, I'd left it out because I had actually meant to ask about this, "I ran a prism survey and got some images."

The Flamels look over my photographs of the dining room wall with the rainbow projected on it. "Yes," Perenelle says at length, "_Defensor Patriae_. The signature is quite distinctive."

"Defender of the Homeland?" I translate, "All I could figure out is that it's a really big piece of magic that got worked on for something like eight or nine hundred years. Some sort of blood magic, possible human sacrifice involved, very strong defense and protection elements."

She nods along with the thumbnail summary of my analysis, "Well, Sam Hartlib's the nearest thing to an expert nowadays. He was one of the last to have a hand in it. He ensorcelled Charles Stuart's execution scaffold to add his blood and life to the magic. Sam was on the Parliamentary side of the civil war, you see, and when they sentenced the king to death he took a view of 'waste not, want not' about the whole thing even though he didn't approve of the proceeding."

I'm a bit taken aback. "Do I understand correctly? The magical defence of the realm is powered by the sacrifice of royal blood?"

She gives me the kind of bright and brittle smile that puts a polite face on a distasteful topic. "I understand so, yes. I seem to recall there were some peers of the realm and knights put to death as well, but royalty is the most powerful charge. Charles Stuart's death allowed Sam to seal it for all time, if memory serves. Alfred the Great is reputed to have commissioned the first working on the site of what is now the Tower, and may have given his life to protect his realm. The histories are, sorry to say, obscure as all records of Alfred were heavily edited when Secrecy came in, what with him being England's first sorceror-king. Most of what became the College were in Egypt or Byzantium at the time, so we don't know either. Using the deaths of traitors came later, as I understand it."

I'm more than mildly surprised at how much sense it makes. "Resulting in every attempt at invasion since being a complete shambles of poor planning and incompetent execution?" The Armada, Napoleon, Operation Sealion: none of them got even close to the shores of Blighty, and all were marked by spectacular cockups. "Do we know what else can be done with that magic? Should I be asking Dr. Hartlib?"

"Probably," Pernelle says, "but what I'm wondering is how Lily Potter managed to call on it. It's supposed to be something only the oath-sworn and officers of the king should be able to do."

I take a moment. It's not so much a magical question as a legal question, and I'm the only one of us present that has ever passed exams in that. "Would the magic adapt to the current political reality?" I ask.

Perenelle takes a moment to think. "It's rather likely, yes. It's a magic of the realm, so what the realm currently _is_ should govern and guide it."

"Hmm. So under current conditions 'officers' means officers appointed under authority of the crown in parliament. Which would mean constables, justices of the peace, officers of the armed forces, possibly other ranks in same, most of the civil service above some grade we'd have to experiment to find, officers of the court, and probably a whole lot of other categories I can't think of off the cuff. She wasn't likely to be any of those, unless she got a special constable's warrant we don't know about. Leaves 'oath-sworn'. How formal do you have to be, do you think?" There's something I've seen in Petunia's memories that represents an amusing possibility.

Nicolas takes this one, "We're talking about oaths in the sight of magic. Sincerity would be the most important thing."

"So a promise to serve the queen made by a seven-year-old little girl, in all childlike innocence, would do the job?"

"Yes, quite well I should think, at least until adult cynicism erodes it, but who administers oaths to children that young?"

"The Brownie Guides. If it's the same as the Cub Scout Promise I made, it starts with a promise to do one's duty to God and the Queen." Amusing. Dumbledore would never have figured this out in a million years.

Nicolas chuckles. "I _will_ be circulating photographs of Sam Hartlib's face when he hears about this."

Perenelle is more measured. "What the world lost when that girl was murdered," she says, wistfully, "to discover one of the old magics and use its own terms to trick it into making her sister's house a protected place? Brilliant."

She's not wrong. Contemplating what she did, the pure brazen audacity of it, I think I'm actually falling in love.

"It would require the post be manned by loyalists, if not actual patriots, though," Nicolas says when he gets himself back under control. "The magic wouldn't protect rootless cosmopolitans like Perenelle and I, for instance. Or most magicals, they think the Queen is just another muggle and the muggle parts of the realm don't count. Which is why she couldn't use it wherever she was hiding from this Riddle character, her husband was a pureblood wizard, no?"

"It'd work for me, though," I say, "Just about, at any rate, I'm a bit of a My Country Right Or Left sort of patriot, which is more in the spirit than the letter, I suspect. I imagine the real driver in this house is Vernon. Bless him, he's a small-minded jingoistic xenophobe, and fiercely proud of it, and those will have been the values the magic was first worked with. I'm going to guess that Lily didn't actually know how powerful the magic she was calling on was, or she'd have moved her husband out for the duration, possibly moved in with her sister since there was a reconciliation in its early stages at the time, and let Riddle fry himself on a magic he had no idea of, and unlikely to know about."

Both Flamels are nodding along.

I really want to tell Dumbledore about this. The look on his face, when he learns what he meddled with in his ignorance? It's going to be one for the ages.

I can't help but feel I'm not making some important connection when it comes to thinking about this magic, though. It nags at me, but inspiration doesn't come.

-oOo-

The week after the Summer Solstice - and the ritual and subsequent Bollocking Of Dumbledore - I make a breakthrough with Skriker. I get him to go for walkies around Little Whinging. I'm probably going to scare seven shades of shit out of anyone who can see me, but like all dogs he's a good listener and I've done a lot of good thinking while walking the dogs I've owned.

"Shame it took so long to get you around to doing this, lad," I tell him, "since there's a chance I won't be able to come any more."

He gives me a doggy huff.

"Well, of course you managed to be a good boy for centuries without my help, but company can't hurt, can it?"

He perks up and points for a moment. There's a loud squeal of brakes and a bang from somewhere up the road, in the direction Skriker is indicating. There's a signed accident blackspot on the A-road that Little Whinging is on, and from the sounds it just claimed another victim. He relaxes after a moment. Whatever happened, everyone's going to survive it.

"See?" I say, "if that had been fatal I could have gone along. Done any talking you needed doing. Obviously that couldn't be a regular thing, but you've been such a good listener and I want to do something about feeling so obliged."

Skriker leans in to the scritches I give him.

"Yes, I know, being a Good Boy is its own reward. We still give good boys treats, and since you can't eat treats, well …"

He lopes off to have a good sniff at a lamppost. Checking his social media, kind of thing.

"Well, I'm going to have to be off soon. I'm going to wear my new body for the first time at the break of day and Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels are coming to see. It wouldn't do not to be there to greet them."

I steer us back to the churchyard and leave Skriker with much reassurance that he _is_ a good boy, yes he is.

Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels apparate with a gentle pop into the back garden at Number Four a little after twenty to five in the morning. Vernon's still in bed and I've remembered to keep my occlumency down, so they can see me. After a round of good mornings we go into the garage and I turn the light on for the first time in a week. I note that the temperature controller is showing 37.6 degrees and about half the fan heaters are running. "Don't need those any more," I say, and hit the kill switch. The room won't lose more than half a degree in the ten minutes between now and sunrise. We take the time to check everything over. While the garage has been sealed up tighter than a duck's arse for the last week, that doesn't rule out screwy magical effects.

"Are we waiting for anything in particular?" Hartlib asks.

"No," I say, "the process is all but run. I could go straight in, but the optimum moment to take my first breath is sunrise after seven nights of growth. While I'm sure there's plenty of slack in the procedure I devised with all your help, I want to take no chances with the first one I've ever done."

"First one anyone has ever done," Nicolas Flamel avers, "while this was always a theoretical possibility, it was a solution in search of a problem up until now."

"If I'm right about the technologies of the next couple of decades," I say, "it might well be proof-of-concept for growing transplant organs in vitro. It'll require a lot of technical workarounds for the bits we did with magic, of course, but I shouldn't be too terribly surprised if this can be done in mundane labs by the middle of the 21st century. The first actual cloned mammal is only ten years or so away, after all."

Before we can get into the interesting speculations, Perenelle has her watch out and forestalls us. "One minute," she says, "how do you want to do this?"

"Well, if you undo the seals - they're simple bow knots, just pull an end - and lift the lid smartly as I go in, I should be fine from there. I could probably do it myself from the inside, but I'd very much like to go with certainly being able to take a first breath that isn't whatever outgassing the inside of the vessel has filled up with."

There's definitely a body in there, of a suitable size to be a child somewhat larger than Harry. It's blurred by condensation all over the inside, so no details are visible. It's a healthy-looking pink, though, which is a good sign. We're about to get a whole lot of data about the interaction of epigenetics and ritual magic, and it looks like Harry's genes are able to express as a rather larger kid than the average-height-but-skinny you get if you carry them in a normal womb for nine months and then keep the result in a cupboard under the stairs and feed it scraps for three and a half years.

Perenelle counts me down. "Three, two, one, go!"

Dead on the moment, I enter my new home. I blink sleep crusted eyes open and immediately screw them shut again. It's bright in here.

I feel dizzy, light headed, slightly floaty. Oh yeah. Breathe, you fuckin' idiot. I hear the lid lift off with a hiss. Low pressure, must've used up some of the oxygen from the air in here. Possibly oxygenate the mix next time? Install a gas lock?

I gulp in as big a breath as I can manage, hold, release slowly. I'm laying in lukewarm slurried sausage, and trying to do breathing exercises. Also bare-arse naked in company, I helpfully remind myself. I feel like I've run an hour of wind sprints. Not enough oxygen in the haemoglobin. A dozen breaths and the feeling fades. Which is cool, apparently I've been born _fit_. Through squinted eyes I look at my thumbnails, squeezing them to get a rough guess at my blood saturation. They come up pink with gratifying quickness.

I sit up, shaky as a newborn lamb.

"Well, come on, lad, say something," Hartlib barks out.

"Something," I choke out through a dry throat, to a round of chuckles. "Could murder a cup of tea."

"Come on, up you get," Perenelle says, in that brisk tone that I'm pretty sure they have courses in at NHS teaching hospitals, "and let's give you a once-over."

"Right," I say, "muscle tone's a bit rubbish. Give me a minute. There's towels and a dressing-gown on top of the freezer there, could someone be an absolute star…?" I'm slurring my words just a bit, having to talk slowly and deliberately. No muscle memory _anywhere_. I'm going to be weaving and swaying like I'm six pints deep for a few days.

It takes me a couple of minutes to get on my feet, and Perenelle comes through like a champ helping me get the goop wiped off. I'm going to need a shower still - preferably before what's still on me goes rancid - but I'm fit to be seen quite quickly.

While it's going on I'm vaguely aware of Hartlib - "Call me Sam, lad, I was present at your birth after all," - and Nicolas murmuring into pocket dictaphones and performing analytical spells. I think they both get samples of what remains in the sarcophagus, and I direct them to samples of the raw stuff in the freezer. They probably won't do much by way of analysis, I've been lucky to get as much of their time as I have, but even a superficial critique of my work from these two is worth its weight in gold.

Perenelle gets a quick but efficient medical done, I get poked and prodded in all the usual places and my vitals recorded along with the results of her own analytical and diagnostic spells.

"Well," she says at length after borrowing her husband's dictaphone to rattle off a couple of minutes of medical jargon, "you're an outstandingly healthy six year old. Surprising amount of muscle development, muscle tone is a bit below par, certainly, but far better than you really should have on literally your first day up and about, and unless I misremember my growth charts, you're big enough that you could pass for eight."

I've been looking myself over during all of this, and yes, I'm probably going to be the biggest, most jacked six-year old for miles around, if not in all England. Perfect eyesight into the bargain, which is a bit of a bother since I rather like giving people hard stares over the top of my spectacles. "Harry," I sigh, putting two and two together. "What do you care to bet he got enthusiastic about how he expected me to turn out when he was filling that bottle of words?"

That gets me a round of chuckles.

"Magically speaking he's a powerhouse much as all bright children are," Nicolas opines, "and you can't say you weren't warned. I sent you those monographs for a reason."

"I'm not complaining," I remark, "although I _was_ hoping to come out at least _looking_ unremarkable. It's not like possession, either. There was a whisp of what might be developing consciousness in here, but it evaporated when I took up residence. I feel … connected."

"Ownership is important," Sam tells me. "You bought all the raw materials and did all the making yourself, and young Harry, I should imagine, wouldn't have dreamed of treating any of his contributions as less than whole-hearted gifts. From what Perenelle tells me, he's a sweet child."

Perenelle nods and smiles along with that assessment. She rather took to little Harry last week, and I suspect he's in for at least birthday cards from her. I'm pleased to see it: I'd trade a dozen fairy godmothers for an alchemist nana. "He's a little treasure," she says.

"He is that," I say, "and it does suggest that if I do this for someone else a formal transfer of ownership will be an important part of the process. I was expecting to be basically possessing an unensouled body, but I rather think I'm fully at home here." It doesn't augur well for my ability to keep spooking about at night, unfortunately. I may have to go back to the churchyard in the flesh and see if I can still see Skriker.

"Speaking of being at home," Nicolas chimes in, "you mentioned tea as practically the first thing you said when you sat up. I rather think I could stand a cup myself, these early starts are no joke at my age."

After we've had refreshments and a nice long chat about how the procedure went and what lessons might be learned, they decline to remain to greet the Dursleys when they get up. While they're all from times when the occasional good leathering was considered a vital part of childrearing, they're actually a good deal more disapproving of the kind of emotional abuse the Dursleys were handing out than most modern folks would be.

When I pass comment on that, I learn that it's because Obscurials are a thing. Not by that name, though, nor likely to kill the child. "The point," Perenelle tells me, "is that magic proceeds from the soul, mind and heart, and wounds thereto pervert the magic in ways terrible to behold. Monsters are born in the imagination of suffering children. Had little Harry's torment gone on much longer, something terrible might well have woken in him."

"Monsters from the Id," I murmur, although I'm confident Harry would have managed, he did in the books and movies after all. I'm pretty sure the Dursleys would have slacked off somewhat as the years went on. What I saw of Petunia's behaviour was nastier than what appears in the books, but as Harry got older and learned to do things to her standards she would likely have gone easier on him. And, bluntly, Harry may well have been tough enough to cope anyway. Some people can take the kind of emotional damage that makes basket cases of the rest of us and come out no more than a bit quirky.

All three of the alchemists present get my reference though, active in the scientific (and therefore nerd) community as they are. Sam's the one to remark on it, "I'm pretty sure someone involved with that movie had seen what could happen, or had heard stories. There was an incident in New York in the 20s, which was never adequately covered up. Another, shortly after, in Paris, that Nicolas was present for, was kept better concealed largely because Grindelwald and the Thule lunatics were getting going then."

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the events of the Fantastic Beasts movies, but I'll have to do some research to figure out how well the films told the stories. From everything I've seen so far, I suspect the answer is 'not very'.

"Obviously," Nicolas continues, "there were reports back then about Grindelwald trying the deliberate creation of such monsters as weapons of war."

"Not that we didn't know the boy was a bad hat from the faculty at Durmstrang. We've blackballed a couple of his known associates from the College since then," Sam adds, and I'm not slow to make the connection with Dumbledore's history with the Invisible College, "but even the accidental creation of such a thing is disgusting. It's part of why I, for one, am willing to excuse what you did to these people." He gestures to take in the whole house.

I shrug, rather revelling in the fact that I can. "I worked with the capabilities I had. I'm pretty sure they know the score now, are slightly better people even, so I'll be able to use less ethically-questionable violence going forward. They'll be able to choose of their own free will between decent behaviour and being, say, electrocuted." I open my hand and make sparks crackle between my fingers and my thumb. Turns out transfiguring charges on air particles is quite easy, and for party tricks like this, doesn't even require a wand. Lightning from clear skies, or even something as simple as a taser shot, is a way off yet. The important thing, though, is that this is the first test of magic in my new body. Result: all in working order. Better than the physical side, although I can feel an improvement in even the half hour since I first sat up.

That gets me a round of chuckles, and a bit of a discussion of the magic involved going. It's about seven when they all step outside - as etiquette requires - to disapparate.

-oOo-

It's half past seven by the time I get out of the shower and dressed - everything I bought in advance is small on me, so there's shopping to come - and still early for getting the boys up. I was about to see if Petunia and Vernon were ready to get up so we could have a discussion about how we were going forward, but as soon as I step out on the landing I can hear how they've chosen to celebrate Vernon's liberty; I knew Petunia was quite pleased with how Vernon's health-and-fitness programme was turning out and the looks she was giving his body were making me a bit uncomfortable toward the end, there. Yeah, not interrupting _that_.

Which leaves me with the thing I'm decidedly nervous about. Harry was as excited as hell to see me in my new body - he helped make it after all - and it took considerable persuasion to get him to go to bed at all last night. Dudley picked up on it and we had to tell him there was a new person coming and some big news in the morning. Which means a bit of a Talk with that young man, and probably having to look in to getting the Dursleys registered as Knowledgeable Muggles. Petunia probably is already, but nobody at the ministry knows that Vernon and Dudley are living with an underage wizard.

I'm woolgathering. It's nearly eight by the time I go in to Harry's room. He's not awake yet, I doubt he got to sleep at any sensible hour last night, and he's half off his bed in classic little-kid sprawl mode. Easiest way to get him awake is to try and tuck him in and sure enough, a couple of minutes after I get him straightened up he stirs. After few moments of rubbing-of-eyes and blinking, I hand him his glasses and sit on the edge of his bed.

He puts his glasses on and blinks the sleep out of his eyes. "Mal?" he says, and there's that flash of unconscious legilimency; Harry has internalised that the person he sees isn't necessarily the person he's talking to, and his magic has figured out how to just _know_. A quick peek tells me he doesn't know he's doing it. I'm pleased with the change from baseline Harry, in a world that includes polyjuice and possession it's a damn' handy knack to have.

"Yep. Since sunrise this morning, Harry. Madame Perenelle said to say hi."

"MAL!" He yells and leaps in for a hug and immediately starts crying. And giggling. And hiccuping and trying to say absolutely everything at once. Comes time to master the Patronus Charm, this moment _will_ feature. For both of us.

I lean in to the hug and resign myself to being thoroughly limpeted by the little man for a while. It's a good thing he wished me as big and strong as he did, because if I was his size? I'd be flattened at this point.

I'm letting him just get it all out of his system when I hear Dudley come in. "'Ere, geroffim!" he yells, "you're 'urtin' Harry! Gerroff!"

Sir Dudley's spurs start jingling in earnest, and he grabs my shirt and cocks a fist to wallop me.

Harry, fortunately, is quick to talk him down. "No! Don't hit him! Calm down, Dudley, it's Mal, I told you he was gonna be here all real today!"

I look at Harry with a cocked eyebrow, and he immediately goes a bit sheepish. "I told Dudley you used to be a ghost, an' you were telling his dad how to do magic to make you real."

Dudley's frowning. He lets go of my shirt and steps back. "Thought that was a joke. Magic's not real, 'cept on the telly."

I give him a grin. "Well, that's what everyone _thinks_," I tell him. "Have a sit down, and we'll let you in on the secret."

Dudley goes all wide-eyed.

Once I've got all three of us sat cross-legged on the bed, Harry leads off with "Mal can do magic, only it's dead secret."

"Mal's just a kid, though?" Dudley's confused. Which is better than his other emotion, angry.

"I'm sort of a kid and sort of not," I tell him. "I used to be a ghost, but I helped your Dad and Harry to do special magic to make me real again. And magic is real, look!" I hold up a hand and do the Light of Re.

"Cor!"

"Brilliant!"

It's the first time I've demonstrated that spell to either of them.

"Can I learn to do that?" There's a _hunger_ on Dudley's face, and if it _were_ possible for him to learn magic I suspect his reluctance to do schoolwork would be spit on a hot stove in the face of that desire.

"Not that one," I tell him, "Sorry. I can only do that because I used to be a ghost. Harry might, because his mum and dad were magic. Your mum's only a _bit_ magic so you can't do spells. Which is a bit rubbish, I know, but you've still got magic in the family with Harry and me here."

"You're family? Like a cousin or something?"

"Sort of. It's complicated, don't worry about it. I'm a grown-up who can turn into a kid with magic, and I'm here to help Harry with _his_ magic, but I reckon we can be friends. We can play footy and stuff, right?"

"Right!" Dudley understands footy, and is looking forward to rugger. Attempts to get him alongside cricket have proven fruitless, alas. Which is a shame, he's got quite a lot of focus for sports, he'd probably be pretty good.

"Right!" You've got to keep it simple for Dudley. "What's really important, though, is that magic is a secret, like Harry said. You can't talk about it outside the house, and not even in the house if anyone except me, Harry, or Mum and Dad are here. People get really weird about magic even though it's really cool. It's like having a superhero in the family, you can't tell anyone."

"Harry's a superhero?" Dudley's credulity is clearly straining at this one. Superheros are people like Spiderman and the Hulk. Harry's the poor little shrimp that used to live in the cupboard, who we don't call 'freak' any more on pain of a scolding.

"Will be when he grows up, won't you Harry?" I give Harry a thumbs-up, and he gives me two in return.

"Can I be a superhero?" Dudley's persistent, I'll give him that.

"Well, you can try," I tell him. "Maybe be one like Batman, or James Bond. Do really well at school and train hard. But you can still be great some other way, like if you get really good at footy or rugger like your dad wants you to be?"

Dudley nods at that last bit. I've made superheroing sound quite hard, after all. I just lightly touch his mind and make him feel like keeping magic a secret is really, really important. It won't guarantee he doesn't slip, but the kid needs all the help he can get.

Then it's time to demonstrate the turning-back-into-a-grownup thing. The boys find my dressing in grown-up clothes pretty funny - I'm hoping this stuff will fit, I bought baggy trackies and t-shirts, good enough to go out in to buy stuff in whatever size I turn out to be - and are hugely impressed when I drink a measured dose of Ageing Potion to make myself twenty-five for the next twelve hours.

I'm not unimpressed with the results myself. I get the boys to help with a pencil and a doorframe to discover I'm somewhere around six foot four. I'm used to being a big lad and reasonably fit with it, but this body is built like a brick shithouse. For the first time in my existence, I have visible abs. It's all still a bit squishy, because whatever Harry was visualising when he contributed to the magic that made me, it didn't involve the muscle tone that this level of development should come with. A couple of dozen press-ups with two giggling little boys sat on my back is still pretty easy to do, though.

Over breakfast - a fry-up, which Vernon and Petunia join us for while exchanging looks that go right over the boys' heads but which I have to stay thoroughly poker-faced for - I let the boys know that I'll be out today getting clothes that fit me since I guessed completely wrong, but we can go out and have a bit of an expedition next weekend. And, no, even though I can pretend to be a kid, I'm not coming to school with them.

Once they're off out for some outdoor playtime Vernon's first to confront me. "I don't suppose we have any choice about you living here?" he asks. I'm quite impressed with his new-found ability to moderate his tone. He's got cause to be annoyed at me after all, for all the good I've done him, but he still keeps it within polite bounds. Getting laid for the first time in a couple of years probably didn't hurt.

I'd already decided to show at least a little respect. "In the short term? Not really. There's still a certain amount to do to get things right around here, and I'd have to make other arrangements if you want Harry and me out. Longer term, though, I rather hope to persuade you that it's a good thing to have us around. Dumbledore didn't do anything to help you cope with raising a young wizard, and a few things to hamper you. One of which is tying the defensive spells Lily raised to young Harry, and I'm sorry to say that things are going to get nasty again. Remember all the violence and terrorism of the seventies? A lot of that was wizard criminals, and right now this is one of the safest houses in the country. Which means you want Harry here to help keep Dudley safe, and keeping me here with Harry means the magic side of things is a weight off your mind too." I _am _going to buy a house nearby - the Lawson Boom hasn't started yet so prices are reasonable. The distant relation who moved nearby is a lot less out of the ordinary than the distant relation who straight-up moved _in_, after all, and nobody's going to be watching closely enough to be certain where I'm _actually_ living.

He huffs a little over that. "Sort of see your point. Not sure we've got the space, even with that clever tent thing, though. And if we get visitors who're like Pet and can see through things like that, it'll give the game away, won't it?"

I have, as it happens, already thought about that. "Well, you know I've got plenty of money. How do you feel about a loft conversion, my treat? I reckon you can get an extra bedroom or two up there, and it lets us move the tent up out of the box room where people can stumble over it. A fifteen-year lease of the top floor to me at a peppercorn rent, and you get the increased property value when Harry and I move on," Vernon's pretty easy to handle if you've got the wherewithal to bribe him, "and while I'm here you've got a trained lawyer on the premises for all those little hiccups life throws at you, a spare adult for when the boys get boisterous, and a wand for if the magicals make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, you know, I'm a millionaire, which gives me a whole range of other useful capabilities."

He's nodding as I repeat the points I've been making in our dream-therapy sessions. I suspect he's raising objections for form's sake. Probably to re-assert himself with his wife, who he hasn't consciously spoken to in nearly a year, not that they haven't re-made their acquaintance in vigorous fashion this morning. I've been high-handed with him and his family, and I can forgive him for being a bit grumpy about that. Not to the point where I'd actually apologise to either of them, they'd have to be a lot more contrite about the way they treated the boys first, but I'm certainly willing to be understanding about their level of upset. Not least because I've spent most of a year coaching him in how to be angry in a more socially-acceptable way. He might even have a small hope of one day using his anger constructively.

It takes me most of the rest of the week to get a full wardrobe for both my identities bought, not least because as an adult I don't fit standard sizes and it's hard to find options that don't basically involve dressing like a nightclub bouncer. I get the basics and put the bank's concierge service on the lookout for a tailor who's got room on his books for a big lad; given their client base I foresee visits to Savile Row in my immediate future. I'm hampered a bit by the need to not be terribly publicly visible until Petunia has circulated the cover story: a cousin from Harry's side of the family who's finally back in the country after years spent 'working overseas' and staying to 'convalesce' for a while along with his 'nephew' who'll be boarding with the Dursleys while 'dad' is easing back into work and hunting for a house nearby. We go with 'international finance', a subject which I can be convincingly boring about to all but an actual expert, and which does have bizarre working hours and occasional long absences on business trips. Some of which may be genuine, Perenelle has mildly hinted about a job with the investment fund she runs.

If I'm going to do that - as a long-term thing, Harry's welfare is my main concern now - I need to get some qualifications under my belt, which will help build my new identity into the bargain. Mostly that's just booking examinations in material I already know - a handful of O and A levels - and getting a brochure from the Open University to see about a degree. I'm inclining toward mathematics on the basis that that's foundational to the science side of alchemy that I can pick up 'on the job' as I go along, but it's going to be a couple of years before I have to decide as I've got two exam seasons to get through before I can even apply.

-oOo-

It takes a bit of practise, and a few nights spent dreaming like a normal person, but I finally figure out how to get out of my own body. Tom's memories aren't any help, as he wasn't starting from the same place I was, but I'm reassured to discover that having a body of my own hasn't actually changed what I've become since dying. I'm still essentially a spirit, although how that differentiates me from the common run of humanity - luminous beings are we, and all that - is a question for the theologians and other peddlers of metaphysics.

The trick is applying Tom's lessons in lucid dreaming - one of the critical parts of learning Occlumency - so that I can decide to leave while my body is sleeping. It's not something I can do on a whim, unfortunately, so I doubt I'll be able to shed my body like a lizard does its tail in the event of danger. What it does let me do is go back to taking Skriker for walks. It'd be absurd to suggest I've got a pet grim, but we do definitely have an understanding, and he's a good listener while I go over possible plans for the future.

Which is a big deal. I'm going to be making a lot of the bad guys' plans impossible: my mere presence was already a flap of the butterfly's wings, so 'preserving the timeline' is a lost cause even if it wasn't a morally bankrupt course of action. I'm confident that as an Actual Functioning Adult up against the infantilised culture of the wizards I've got plenty of advantages, and in the short term most of what I'll be doing is expanding my capabilities against the day Riddle comes back within reach. If Harry _does_ have to be the one to kill Riddle, I mean for him to do it while I'm holding the bugger down for him.

I'm not really talking much the night after Harry's sixth birthday party; tonight's walk is for decompression. It's the first Saturday in August and 'Uncle Mal' was worn out from running the barbecue for twenty boisterous little kids.

Dropping Skriker off at the graveyard, I apparate - still daren't do it with a body, not until I've had a good deal of practise with a spotter who knows de-splinching spells - back to Privet Drive. I reappear, as I've made my habit, high in the air above the house so as to have one last look around for anything out of the ordinary before going in. I'm more than slightly startled to hear unfamiliar magic being worked somewhere nearby.

Whoever it is, they're invisible, but I can localise the noise of their magic - brassy and ragged, like an overdriven trumpet - to the pavement at the end of the drive. A minute or so's hard staring and I can just see a faint distortion in the air. Whatever they're using to be unseen, it's not quite perfect.

I don't think I ought to let this pass without challenge. "Some might consider that rude," I say, and immediately apparate two paces to my left to hover over the lawn. No sense being in a place I've localised as a target.

The magic stops. There's a long, tense moment of silence. I keep my vision fixed on the spot where I saw the distortion. Whoever it is, isn't moving.

For the moment our mystery visitor isn't doing anything. And hasn't crossed the property line, which I take as a good sign. The obscurity of this address means that the list of people who this could be is quite short not notably criminal. The magic doesn't sound like Dumbledore's, but it's probably someone who knows him. The other group of magicals that know this address is the Special Circumstances team, but they've got the telephone number and would make an appointment during business hours. "Going to introduce yourself?" I ask, moving again as I speak and then apparating straight up ten feet or so. Dodging's so much more effective if you can do it in three dimensions. Not that anyone's shooting yet.

"Are _you_?" The voice is gravelly, with a hint of Merseyside, and I don't recognise it. With hindsight I should've gone through Tom's memories for known associates of Dumbledore and just put up with the vileness of what he did to the ones he caught.

"I live here," I say, bobbing back to ground level. "And while you're out on the public highway and you've a perfect right to be there, you _are_ casting spells in the vicinity of my home so I'm taking an interest."

That earns me an amused-sounding _harrumph_. And then, "You this Reynolds character?"

"How I respond to that depends on whether you've been talking to Dumbledore or someone else who knows who lives here."

"Dumbledore. What difference does it make?"

"Well it means I start by asking if he told you his last visit here, he was committing burglary and muggle-baiting? Because that ended with him punched in the face, tied to a chair, and read the riot act about bollocks like that."

"He, ah, didn't put it in exactly those terms." Definitely Merseyside. They have a way of saying 'exactly' that's unique.

"Surprising," I say, "you'd think admitting burglarly'd establish a rapport with a scouser."

Another rumble of amusement. "I'm from Wallasey, as it happens."

"The difference is only a long hole in the ground," I tell him.

"To a woollyback, maybe." Not up to the usual standards of scouse chat, but it _is_ a tense situation.

"Yeah, well, we all know why the Mersey runs between the Wirral and Liverpool. If it walked, some thieving scouse git'd rob it." The joke's a time-honoured one, and traditional in these circumstances. "Look, are we going to stand here all night bantering, or what? Because you're not going to get through the magical defences on this place, the witch who put 'em up was a genius."

"Dumbledore got in, according to you," mystery voice observes, "and he reckons _he_ put up the defences on this place."

"Nah, all he did was monkey with 'em, for purposes he's not shared with anyone else. I'm pretty sure he didn't know what he was messing with, either. At least I hope he didn't, because otherwise we've got a wizard runnin' about with all that power and no common sense at all. He's lucky he didn't wipe half of Surrey off the map, it's _seriously_ old and powerful stuff and as far as I can tell all but forgotten by mainstream wizardry. But anyway, he crossed the property line but the 'confusion to the enemy' part of the defence meant he came on like a complete idiot and got a smack in the teeth for his trouble. And, you know, still not hearing an introduction. Sorry to mither, like."

He harrumphs. "Name's Moody. Auror. And you're right, I noticed something was affecting my thinking from shortly after I took this job on, which is why I spent more time in surveillance and checking the paperwork than even my normal thorough practice. Anyway, reason I followed up is the suspicion Dumbledore raised about dark activity on your part. Serious allegation, that."

"From a burglar and muggle-baiter. You know, I had a lot of reasons to think poorly of Dumbledore, but I didn't think he'd be _petty_." I'm _really_ pleased to make this man's acquaintance. In the books he was the one character with something like common sense. Magic is _dangerous_, magical criminals doubly so, and what everyone around him calls paranoia I call an appropriate response to the circumstances. I've got to be _extremely_ careful how I do it, but getting this man on-side will be a _massive_ asset. I'm willing to tolerate a great deal of roughness of manner in exchange for the one wizard with his head screwed on tight. Cross-threaded, mind, but _tight._

"Not a denial," he says.

"Not a credible allegation, no need for a denial. Anyway, I'm going to go visible now, since someone has to go first. To your front." I drop my occlumency so I become visible. "As you see, I'm incorporeal and as such not actually a threat." There are spells that can affect ghosts which Moody probably knows - I know them via Tom, but can't cast them yet - so I'm taking a small risk here. The upside is that I'm not _actually_ a ghost so those spells might not work, and I'm a lot _faster_ than any corporeal target. My ability to dodge includes 'a thousand feet straight up in an eyeblink', which I've actually drilled on.

"You said you punched Dumbledore in the face. Hard to do that as a ghost."

"I'm not a ghost, and the muggle chap who owns this place did the thumping while I protected him from Dumbledore's magical attack. My actual body is indoors getting a good night's kip."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a bit of a story. Which, sorry, not telling out here on the street in the small hours without verifying your identity. Let me see it's you, your description is pretty distinctive, and we can talk more. Maybe, if we can figure out how I can _verify_ your identity, we can talk about you coming back during the day with guest-right?" It's an old magic, the binding of guest and host, and one not lightly crossed by a wizard with more common sense than a potted geranium, especially if enacted in the old and proper forms. One of the rare magical contracts that _cannot_ be imposed without mutual consent, and strong enough that the ancient Greeks credited the enforcement of it to Zeus in his capacity as ruler of heaven. The entire _Iliad_ was about a war started by violation of guest-right. It wouldn't stop Moody making an arrest, but it _does_ mean that any arrest he might make _must_ be strictly according to law _and_ backed by a solid case-to-answer.

He drops the hood of his invisibility cloak - one-handed, he has a wand trained on me the whole time, sensible - and holy shit is his face a mess. As I'm coming to expect of my time in this universe, he looks nothing like his movie actor, although the overall build is about right. For all I know, he could be the dead spit of Brendan Gleeson under all the mutilation.

"They don't teach you how to duck in Auror school, then?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Sometimes taking a hit's the price of doing business," he says. "You mentioned guest-right? Not like I can't come back with a warrant."

"Well, you _can_, but if Dumbledore briefed you properly you know why you _shouldn't_. The point I'm driving at is that I reckon I have a lot in common with Alastor Moody, Auror of Repute, as regards the outcome of the last war and the unfinished business thereof. The problem, as I see it, is building a working relationship from absolute flat nothing and I don't see the real Moody, from all I hear of him, respecting me _at all_ if I just take your word for you being who you say you are."

He chuckles. It sort of whistles through the rent in his nose. "And if Dumbledore is to be believed, you're not going to be exactly accommodating with an Auror whose job is _hunting_ the likes of you."

I've no idea if an eyeroll comes across in my glowy-man-shaped-blob form, but I give it a go anyway. "It's at moments like these I regret that without a throat I can't give a good, loud harrumph. While I'm not read in on every last detail of your professional brief as an auror, hunting down spirits just for being spirits ain't part of it, or there'd be a lot fewer of the regular sort of ghost."

"I got told you were possessing a muggle."

"Which isn't actually illegal, and since he benefited by it, you can't really call it dark either. Be that as it may, what I did stopped two children from suffering from neglect and abuse, so even if you _insist_ on calling it dark magic, it's not unforgivable and done in proportionate and lawful defence of others. Which _is_ a defence known to wizarding law, I checked. If you _were_ able to open an official investigation here, it'd end with you writing it up as no crime committed, or whatever the Auror equivalent reporting category is."

His eponymous Mad Eye stops in its local radar sweep and starts scanning the house. "Got to say the kids in there look pretty healthy to me."

"After a year of intervention, yes. Although one of 'em's me, and that body's brand new, it'd be a rum do if it _wasn't_ in good nick. And abuse is more'n just beatings, you know. They were keeping one of those boys, the _important_ one if Dumbledore was keeping track of which is arse and which is elbow, in near constant solitary confinement in the cupboard under the stairs."

"Let's just say, hypothetical-like, I was to accept guest-right, which if I accept it by name _does_ verify my identity. What would we have to talk about over a cup of tea?"

"Well, we'd talk about you learning to use a telephone and making an appointment to come at a civilised hour, for one thing. If I let you in at this time of night and you wake up the Dursleys, well, Vernon has it in his head that punching wizards is fun. He stuck one on Dumbledore and hasn't shut up about it since."

"Be awkward, if nothing else," Moody agrees, visibly amused. Whether that's just on general principles of a wizard of Dumbledore's puissance getting thumped by a muggle or because he has current beef with the man I do rather wonder. "This Vernon'd be the man of the house, then? He'd be the one to grant guest-right?"

"He would, which is the other reason I can't do it right now. Although as I recall the house is in their joint names so Petunia could invite you in too. Be better coming from her, she's a squib so the magic'd hear her better, and the Land Registry will confirm that for you." Truth be told, I _had_ assumed I could do it myself, but Moody has correctly pointed out the flaw.

He nods. "And as a resident here, you'd be bound too. Bit curious about one thing, though. You told Dumbledore you were dead, but you've got a living body now? How's that come to be? Magic can't bring back the dead, it's one o' them things everyone knows."

"Be more accurate to say that magic can't bring back the dead and _gone_. I was dead, but not _gone_. Not so much properly dead as inconveniently discorporated, I got some help from alchemists. How well it works as a long-term solution remains to be seen, of course, but I'm quietly confident."

"So this'd work with ordinary ghosts?"

That's a sharp insight, and it takes me aback for a moment. "Huh. I hadn't thought of that. It actually _might_, but I can't think of how off hand. Most ghosts can't possess the living, they've only just got enough magic to manifest, nothing more. Just speculating, here, but the ghost'd probably come back as a squib at most if they were magical when they were alive. Might be something to try if we can find a ghost who'll volunteer knowing that risk. Preferably one who's recently deceased so - sorry, that was an interesting thought, and I've been thinking hard about uses for the process lately. Mainly whole-body transplants for the seriously crippled, but the soul transference is a _seriously_ difficult problem, and all of the approaches I've found in the literature so far have major ethical problems."

Moody's openly laughing at me. "If you end up going to Hogwarts like Dumbledore says, you're a dead cert for Ravenclaw. And mind you keep your eye on those ethical problems."

"I surely will." Although not sure about the Ravenclaw crack, since scholarship is a means to an end for me and has been for a long time. If I'd been sorted at eleven or twenty? Different story. "Now, back to you coming back for a chat. I've put a lot of _my _cards on the table, how about you?"

"Well, Dumbledore asked me to look into what you were doing. I reckon I went a bit further than he was expecting, and found all the records you turn up in on the muggle side. That led me to here, and, well, long story short, who that kid is up there in the magical tent in the smallest bedroom. Went and had a look at the court records for _him_, and _that_ led me to Coutts and a lad who was in Hufflepuff a few years behind me. Nice bloke. Told me he couldn't say anything what with client confidentiality, but if he had a client's permission he could give a glowing reference."

I'm going to have a _word_ with Huw. Bankers' confidentiality isn't nearly as absolute as the standard I hewed to as a lawyer, but he's still crossed a line. It's worked out to my benefit this time, but there's a proper protocol to these things and it _starts_ with getting the client's permission, before which you neither confirm nor deny. However, Moody's the one in front of me. "You mention Dumbledore to Huw?"

"I didn't, as it happens. Should I have?"

"You had no reason to, and Huw was over the line as it was, don't think I won't be pinning his ears back over it, but his team found the evidence of Dumbledore's cockups that's the _other_ reason he's sent you after me with only half a story. When we were reading him the riot act that came up too. I'll _certainly _authorise Huw to copy you with _that_ file."

"We've a lot to talk about, then," Moody says. "Give me the telephone number and I'll call later this morning about a convenient time to come and talk to the Dursleys and, after that, have a long chat with you."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Anyone want to bet that Riddle would be the sort that thought of love of country as mawkish sentimentality that nobody sensible had any part of, never mind cognoscenti like his magnificent self?

Anyway, there really is a solid historical record of invasion attempts of the British Isles being marked by incompetence and misfortune - Britain doesn't so much win against invaders as have them lose at us - and if there was any king of the English who was a wizard, it was Alfred the Great, who had mind-trick level powers of persuasion against his kingdom's enemies. The invasions that worked - 1066, 1135 and 1688 - were made by people who had an arguable claim on the throne, making them more like coups, and two of the three didn't even bring much of an army when they came. And since the magic is a protection of the realm first enacted in the teeth of the Danish invasion, it has a blind spot where civil wars and coups are concerned, but it does treat post-secrecy magical Britain as a foreign power.

It's not the only way to make sense of the protective magic around Number Four, but it's the one I've picked. And, of course, sacrificially-powered protective magic is something we _know_ Lily Potter was read up on, so that's how she protected Harry personally. James's role is obscure: his valiant death may have been a part of the ritual, or simple courage to the last. We may never know.

The Open University is the UK's distance-learning institution of choice, and has been since 1971 when it was founded. If you don't give a stuff about the prestige of the institution or the undergraduate experience and just want to learn the material, it's hard to beat.

Geographical note: Merseyside, the urban area either side of the mouth of the Mersey, has Liverpool to the north and the Wirral - where Wallasey is - to the south of the river. They're connected by the Mersey tunnels. And unless you're really dialled in on the accents, they inhabitants are all a lot of bloody scousers. (I'm on both sides of the mutual pisstaking between Merseyside and the rest of Lancashire, because I was born in Liverpool although moved away early enough that I didn't pick up the accent.)

I stand by what I say about Moody. The Magical world is, in a lot of places, a very nasty place where paranoia is straight-up common sense. We only really get to know him from the acting performance Barty Crouch jr. delivers and the jokes others make about him: the couple of times he appears in his own right he seems like a lot less of a caricature. I've gone with a characterisation that is actually _functionally_ paranoid, which means he does _all_ the investigative legwork and can be reasoned with. But keep your hands where he can see them and don't make any sudden movements.

Finally, the Riot Act was the authorisation to use lethal force (and hang any taken alive) against any gathering of more than 12 persons, starting one hour after the Act was read aloud in their presence. Repealed in 1967, it survives as a figure of speech for either 'final warning' or 'epic bollocking' and usually both.

Fanfic recommendation: Lust Over Pendle, the only slash story I ever really got on with. It pre-dates the later books considerably, so it's AU from the end of Goblet of Fire onward, but the world-building is _beautiful_. It's not on any of the standard fanfic sites, but a google search for it brings it up handily.


	16. Interview Under Caution

DISCLAIMER: Does nobody look in to what House Elves have to offer despite them being instrumental in confounding at least two of the bad guys' major plots? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

CHAPTER 16

"_We've a lot to talk about, then," Moody says. "Give me the telephone number and I'll call later this morning about a convenient time to come and talk to the Dursleys and have a long chat with you."_

-oOo-

"Well, I'm pleased to tell you Mr. Reynolds that you have _passed_ your driving test."

"Well, that's a relief. One hears about it being stressful, but…"

"Quite. You're older than the usual candidate …?" The examiner has her clipboard on her knee and is ticking off the last few boxes.

"I learned abroad," I tell her, because the past _is_ a foreign country, "and I'm given to understand by my broker that my insurance rates are about to go down _radically_ now I'm no longer driving on a foreign license. Which is expired anyway."

"Ah, that would explain the only three minors thing on a first test. Been driving a while?"

"Since I was seventeen," which is the unvarnished truth. And this is my _fourth_ test, and second pass, it took until my third try the first time around. Sneaking a peek at the clipboard on the tweed-skirted knees next to me, it looks like I've managed to sell the illusion of a much younger driver fairly well. The only fly in the ointment is that I'm going to have to do this again under the much stricter late 90s regime when my kid identity grows up. Fortunately, that's the only time. Once you've got a British driving license, that's it until you're seventy, when the shelf-life shifts to three years. _This_ test qualifies me under the old rules, too, which means my license is also good for goods vehicles up to twelve tonnes laden, motorcycles, small buses, agricultural machinery, towing trailers with all the foregoing, and tanks.

With the paperwork signed I get Petunia from the test centre waiting room. I've had to have a fully-licensed driver along while I've been driving on a provisional, and she was good enough to play the part for today.

"You passed, then?" She says, tucking her novel - Jackie Collins, may she be forgiven - back in to her handbag.

"I did, so let's get you home."

It's a sign of how far back in history we are that I have to nag Petunia about wearing her seatbelt properly: they were only made mandatory three years ago and she appears to have caught Vernon's opinion of 'nanny state nonsense.' She does, however, rather enjoy driving - and riding in - the car, which is a Mark IV Spitfire almost identical to the one my old self will own in about ten years.

Vernon and the boys have been fascinated with the near total tear-down and re-fit I've done. I'm not really up to repair spells more complicated than the most utterly basic rust removal and dent straightening - primitive transfigurations I can nearly do just by touch alone, never mind the wand - so I've had to get it into shape mostly the hard way. Having a great deal of money and almost nothing but free time for the moment meant I was able to overhaul it in less than a week. The new paint-job is booked for next week. I'm torn between keeping the (probably) original-fit overdrive or getting a sensible gearbox fabricated and fitted, because the overdrive is one thing I really _don't_ miss. I've already made _one_ change, though. The hardtop has a shrinking charm fitted - it's a _very_ standard runic spell, in all the books, usually applied to things like furniture - so I can take it off and put it in the boot with a couple of wand-taps. Today, being rainy, it's firmly _on_. I've owned one soft top in my life and they're really not a good idea in the British climate.

We make desultory conversation all the way back to Privet Drive. Turning in off Magnolia Drive I hear the distinctive sound of Moody's magic: at a guess he's left an alarm charm to let him know when we're back. He's already spoken to Petunia - I'd primed her to expect his call ("Magical police, but at the Bodie-and-Doyle end of things rather than Dixon of Dock Green, we want him on our side so be cooperative") and given her a card with the proper words and response for guest-right.

I had a crafty look at her memories of the interview. The rules of guest-right prevented him from slipping her any kind of truth potion in her tea, substituting a sneakoscope on the kitchen table that he warned her straight up would sound off if anyone lied in its presence. And Moody does _not_ need truth potions, veritaserum or otherwise, to get a witness talking. I'm honestly impressed: I'm trained in the same skills and got quite a lot of experience before I moved away from litigation, so even if I'm nobody's idea of a master of the art, I _can_ recognise one in action. He could and probably should give masterclasses: he has her unburdening herself _utterly_ inside an hour. Turns out she actually _did_ have a soul that was in dire need of confession: she was actually _thanking_ him by the end of their little chat, ugly-crying into the bargain. She also had full and complete particulars of the Errors and Omissions Of Albus Dumbledore and was a direct witness of several of them.

It turns out that Moody has your classic Old-Fashioned Copper's soft spot for kids and very hard and spiky spot for those who would harm them, so - reading between the lines of what he said to her after finishing their interview and in our subsequent telephone conversations - what I've done to the Dursleys is no-harm-no-foul in his book. I've no idea if he's ever nicked an actual offender against children, but I can readily imagine him showing such an individual why a millstone round the neck and cast into the sea really _is_ the soft option for such. I won't go so far as to say he's got a cob on at Dumbledore as a result of what Petunia told him, but he's certainly been given plenty of reason to come to the view that his brief to 'look into this Reynolds character' was entirely disingenuous. Today is the day that he and I are due to have our sit-down chat.

As we're getting out of the car - Petunia dashing for the front door to save her perm - I notice a slight distortion in the rain. _Does he ever take that invisibility cloak off?_ "Well, don't stand there like cheese at fourpence, Moody, y' scouse git. I'll be getting the kettle on."

"Woollyback humour at its finest. We should have passwords and countersigns," he says, following me in. There's a blare of magic that removes the rain drips from the doormat and he emerges from under his invisibility cloak. He is, by wizard standards, not that outlandishly dressed. The suit and mackintosh are a good three decades behind the times, but it's not like there aren't plenty of elderly muggles still cutting about in their demob suits as late as the eighties. My grandfather was _buried_ in his in 2001.

"Shibboleths work better," I say. "Pre-agreed security tokens can be compromised. The whole Merseyside-Lancashire thing is a shared cultural context that isn't a wizarding one, _much_ harder to fake and not obviously a security measure. On top of which, you _are_ expected, if early. And I heard your alarm charm at the end of the road, and I know the sound of your magic." I'm quite pleased with the implicit agreement that he and I are to have at least a working relationship. I suspect he's a bit too damaged and me a bit too dubious about wizard law enforcement for us ever to be what you might call _friendly. _Cordial civility will do.

He chuckles. "Take your point about me bein' expected. As for your suggestion, I like the way you think, but the scouse-woollyback thing happens among wizards as well, and the wrong 'uns know it too. You know the Beatles, though? Most of the filth don't."

"I do. Lyrics?" It's an obvious source of challenges and countersigns, and outside the cultural context that your pureblood bigots and their Death Eater militant arm come from.

"Verses, not choruses."

"I'll have to memorise some. Stick with stuff off Sergeant Pepper to start with, it's the only one I'm really familiar with."

"Well, if you want to change that, send me a postcard, drop me a line."

"Stating points of view? Yeah, I'll get the other albums and refresh myself. We'd not have this problem with the Stones, mind. How'd you take your tea?" We're in the kitchen by this point, and I'm putting the kettle on.

"Black, and one. Milk gives me wind. Not been able to figure out the curse to break it, it's a funny one."

"Probably not a curse," I tell him, "you're probably just allergic to it and it's getting worse as you get older. Just avoid dairy and get the calcium you need in your diet elsewhere. Plenty of muggle books on healthy nutrition, read up on lactose intolerance." It's the eighties, non-dairy milk isn't a supermarket staple item yet as far as I can tell, and the soya milk you _can_ get is fuckin' _rank_.

"Familiar with muggle healin'?" he asks.

"Had my fair share of health problems when I was first alive, raised three kids. You pick up a thing or two. And I _was_ a muggle, so it was that or nowt."

"And Dumbledore was _certain_ you were a wizard ghost. I wasted a _lot_ of time chasing that for him. As for the music, never cared for the Stones. Only really know the Beatles because the muggle side of the family were mad for the buggers at the time, good tunes though. Better than the bloody Hobgoblins, that's for sure. Have to say I was mostly soured on muggle music when Dylan went electric."

I have to pause in making tea so I don't laugh boiling water all over the place. Never would have expected a dyed-in-the-wool copper like Moody to be upset that Dylan stopped being quite so political. Takes all sorts, I suppose. "At some point," I say, "I'm going to have to have a listen to wizarding popular music. My expectations ain't what you might call high, I mean, what's the magical population of Britain?"

"Somewhere around ten thousand wand-carrying, possibly as many as fifteen thousand, maybe three times that again in squibs and knowledgeable muggles. Which, yeah, is about what you'd be used to as a largish village, small town type of place."

"So, wizarding music is basically the pub gig scene from the town I grew up in? Yeah, my expectations are _not_ high."

I get the pot steeping and float it to the table, along with the sugar bowl, the milk jug (while I'm firmly of the view that pouring it into my tea straight from the bottle is completely acceptable, I'd never hear the fucking end of it from Petunia) and a couple of mugs. "Won't take it amiss if you cast a few detection spells on it, you've a reputation for common sense."

"That's not what they usually call it," he says, pointedly setting his sneakoscope on the table.

I give the sneakoscope a once-over. I've seen this model in shops and it's the high-roller version, and from the looks Moody has modified it himself. I'm pretty sure I can beat one - self-control short of occlumency will beat most standard models, and while I don't doubt that Moody's model will beat all but the best occlumency and I've no idea how good I actually _am_, there's a trick to interviews like this and rule one is Not Lying. Choose your words carefully, certainly, and guide the conversation away from difficult topics, but don't lie. Because, while No Comment sounds decidedly fishy, it's not damning evidence - not evidence at all, in a lot of jurisdictions - the way that a lie contradicted by other evidence would be. "Yeah, well," I say with a shrug, "it's a dangerous world. Caution pays. I can respect a man who recognises that."

"Makes me wonder what precautions you're taking."

"Relying on guest-right, and letting you make yourself comfortable with the refreshments is proper to that. That and ancient enchantments that'd do for you if you tried a hostile move. Which you won't. As you noticed the magic on this place is mind-affecting. Helping you to decide in favour of caution and de-escalation."

"De- what? Never mind, I can work it out from context. Who says that?"

"Thing from non-magical law enforcement. They train 'em to calm things down if they can." They did in my day, at any rate. We're in the slightly less civilised 20th century here, they've probably only just stopped teaching 'six officers and a bloody good hiding' as standard arrest procedure.

"So part of the defence here is calming charms?"

"Not in so many words, but there's a decision-affecting element, like in most defensive magics and with a cautious lad like yourself? It'll be tilting your thoughts toward doing everything in a proper and legal manner."

"Well, part of the file I've got on _you_ shows you doing most of what I could find - don't think your shenanigans with the Registry of births escaped me, but I'm treating that as a minor matter, it's a help to Secrecy if nothing else - in a proper and legal manner. Seems only fair."

"Most of Dumbledore's cockups wouldn't have happened if he'd taken the time and trouble to do what I did with the courts and the bank. Or delegated it to someone who _would_." I pour two mugs and let him pick. He jabs his wand at pot, mug and sugar-bowl with short blats of magic.

Petunia walks in at that moment, having made her customary dash for the loo as soon as she got in. "Oh! Mister Moody. Hello." She's visibly trying not to bring up any of the last conversation she had with him, which is good: while I've told _him_ that she's given me full particulars of the interview, I neglected to mention that I got it with legilimency. Which is not a crime, but only doubtfully legal and _definitely _bad form.

"He's early," I say, and offer him the Eyebrow Expectant.

"Deliverin' a warnin'. Dumbledore's agitating to get Sirius Black out of Azkaban, bein' very cagey as to why. Black's got a history with young Harry -" Ooh, _that_ is interesting. As much for Moody taking it on himself to give us a warning about Dumbledore's actions as anything else.

"Ah, I knew about that," I say, to Moody's evident surprise. "The man's innocent. And of course Dumbledore _didn't_ consult his friend in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement about correcting a miscarriage of justice."

I catch Moody and Petunia alike up with Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew and their Unfortunate Series of Events, and the story I gave Dumbledore. Moody ends up having to beg Petunia's pardon for the language he uses. For my own part I'm quietly pleased that while Dumbledore _did _set Moody after me, fortunately in terms that let him follow the trail I left of doing things mostly-legally, he is also taking the miscarriage of justice seriously enough that from the sound of it he _has_ made progress.

"Although," Moody says once Petunia is mollified, "I've given Dumbledore plenty of reason to think I'd not approve o' what he's doin'. There's been a lot o' missed opportunities with the Death Eater crowd, and the old man had the political weight to stop that happenin'. I've given off at him about it more'n a few times. And, fair's fair, I thought Black was guilty same as everyone else. Didn't know he'd not had a _trial_ though. Whole point is bringin' the b-, sorry, the _scoundrels_ to where they have to answer for what they've done. If it was just about gettin' 'em out o' circulation I'd not have near so many scars. Explodin' curse to the jacksie and job's a good 'un. Capturin' 'em's a _lot_ harder."

I nod. It's a part of how I've always known Moody isn't _dishonestly_ bent. A vigilante with a warrant wouldn't take the risks he plainly does. A man who doesn't feel himself hindered by duty doesn't get insecure enough to turn so paranoid you take care to keep your hands in plain view while making him a cuppa, and don't complain when he performs small detection spells on the tea service. "Do you know how much progress Dumbledore is making?"

"He's saying he has vital new evidence under lock and key at Hogwarts and Black needs a retrial. _First_ trial, if you're right about that. He's in an' out the Ministry like a fiddler's elbow, and Barty Crouch is dogging his heels insisting that Black can't be allowed to get out on whatever technicality Dumbledore has cooked up."

"Well, the murder victim still being alive and well _is_ a technicality, if you like," I allow with a grin, covering up my absolute _horror_ at realising I've been forgetting Barty Crouch Junior more or less since I first popped up in the cupboard under the stairs, "although quashing the charges of betrayal would mean beating a confession out of Pettigrew." Or, more likely, Snape brewing a largish batch of Veritaserum and keeping well out of the rat's line of sight.

"Still," I go on, "you say the problem is Barty Crouch? Have you had word of his wife dying?"

"Last year, why?"

"Well, the visions and divinations I based my tip to Dumbledore on - which you'll note have come good enough for him to, from the sounds, capture Pettigrew - include the little problem of Mrs. Crouch having died in Azkaban, not at home as is popularly supposed, because she took her son's place. Polyjuice potion, if I had to venture a guess. Barty Junior is kept hidden at home, so if you want to remove the obstacle to Black's freedom _and_ get one of the more rabid villains back doing bird, you now have an anonymous tip. Crouch the elder has been using unforgivables to keep his son subdued into the bargain, which _ensures_ he's taken off the board if you can secure the evidence. And I'll say again what I said to Dumbledore: Black getting out early cuts off some very nasty potential futures and opens up some pretty good ones into the bargain." It's not so much that I'd forgotten Barty Crouch as that I just hadn't made the connection between 'trying to plan for the Tri-Wizard tournament' and 'making sure Tom doesn't have a competent agent to send in the first place'. I'd had _all_ kinds of thoughts about reversing the imposture by freeing Moody from his own trunk and forcing mind-altering potions down Barty Junior's throat to milk him for every scrap of intelligence he had.

"And when were you planning to report this vision, Mister Anonymous Informant?" Moody is quite rightly audibly annoyed with me. Which, fair enough. I decide he _really_ doesn't need to know I plain _forgot_.

"When I had an auror I could rely on to keep the tip anonymous, an auror who to my pretty certain knowledge isn't bent," Moody actually _is_ a bent copper, by the standards I hew to, but he's _honest_ bent, which is to say he'll cheerfully fit up a villain, use his discretion for minor offences by decent people, and straight up kill anyone who offered him a bribe, "and when it would be useful to the war effort. It's not like the little shit is _going_ anywhere, after all."

"Language," Petunia puts in, fascinated despite herself.

"Crouch is only the _big_ obstacle," Moody allows, simmering down a bit. "There'll still be a fight. Arcturus Black wants his heir out before he dies, pretty unlikely bedfellow for Dumbledore _that_ one is, and I'm hearing rumblings that Abraxas Malfoy is weighing in against him. They're a pair of the bigger old beasts on the Wizengamot. The fight's going to be one for the books, not that I can see what Malfoy's angle is."

"The inheritance, I would have thought," I say, maintaining a diplomatic silence about the fact that from my own perspective 'big beast in the Wizengamot' is more like 'big crab in the rockpool', "Sirius is the last of the main line of the Blacks, and Malfoy's daughter-in-law is the senior claimant to the entails that's still alive, at liberty, and not disowned."

"Makes sense," Moody nods, "Buying his son's liberty probably didn't come cheap, getting the Black fortune would go a long way to refilling the family vault."

I spot the opportunity to start releasing some _kompromat_ into the wild. "Trying to erase the stain of his son having been enslaved probably isn't any cheaper, I reckon. That ugly tattoo they all got is an old Roman slave-marking spell. You might want to spread some nasty rumours that nobody knows what effect it has on the slave's mind to have that thing on him. Even without whatever dark-arts malarkey got added to it. I mean, are we just hoping that if they go doolally and start murdering, raping and cannibalising their nearest and dearest they do it _in that order_?"

Petunia looks aghast, and Moody outright _hoots_ with laughter. "Going to mention that to Dumbledore next time his pet Death Eater comes up in conversation. Oh, and if your identity ever gets out, no part of your anonymous tip came from divination. It's completely inadmissible evidence, even in support of a search warrant."

I snicker a bit. As long as you know just how bent they are and in which direction, bent coppers are people you can do business with. Practically the dictionary definition of the beast. While I've got the family Crouch in mind, the third member impinges on my thoughts and I raise her with Moody, "The other thing that's worth noting is that Crouch is using the elf at his house to maintain the cover-up. It's not certain, but he's more likely than not to blame the poor thing for him getting his collar felt and give her clothes. If you're present for that, tell her to come here. Without my interference she'd have kept it up for ten years, and an elf like that is _useful._ Plus it keeps her somewhere you can find her for further interviews."

Moody rocks a hand. "Not actually admissible, elf testimony. Stupid, I know, but -"

"Intelligence is intelligence, even if you can't lead it in evidence before a court," I point out.

"True," he allows, nodding.

"Are you going to explain why we're giving house-room to an elf?" Petunia asks.

Between Tom, my own reading - Hermione in the books is actually not the first to get a wild hair up their arse over the subject of elfish welfare, there are a number of books on the subject - and actually doing some thinking, I've got this. I _had_ been trying to figure out a way to get Dobby free earlier than in the books, but Winky is probably a better choice for looking after a home and kids on account of not being, you know, completely insane. "Wizards call them house elves, but you'd know them as Hobs, where you grew up. Where I was from, and points north into Scotland, they're called Brownies."

"As in -?"

"As in what the Brownie Guides are named after, yes. Spirits of place who live in homes and care for them. They used to be a lot more widespread before magical secrecy, but they're a very real boon so long as you remember the basic rules, which are: treat them with respect, never give them clothes and don't offer payment like they're not part of the family. Rewards in plenty, you'll more than likely _want_ to, but always framed in terms like 'doing something nice for a good elf', _never_ payment for services rendered. We'll have to ask the elf, if she comes, whether she's happy to make and wear her own clothes, but you should _never_ offer an elf clothes, it banishes them from their home. Most of them dress in adapted household linens, towels and bedding and such, to emphasise that they belong to the house as much as the furniture, fixtures and fittings."

"What do they do?" Petunia's looking _proper_ fascinated, this is stuff out of actual fairy-tales.

"Whatever they can to help, just like the Brownie Guides named after them. Housework, cooking, gardening, minding the children, those are the usual things, you'll probably find she's capable of a lot if you ask nicely. They like high standards to be maintained, so you'll have no problem."

"They're powerful in defence of their home, as well," Moody adds, a hint of scouser political consciousness in his tone, "they'd be a real problem for law-enforcement if the ministry hadn't geased the lot of them to be law-abiding in the face of warrants to enter. They'd still manage to make nuisances of themselves if the sort of people I have to deal with weren't _also_ the kind to treat their elves like sh- like _slaves_."

"Which they're _not_," I emphasise, "even if it is possible, even easy, to reduce them to that condition by taking advantage of their need for a home and terror at the thought of being thrown out of it."

Petunia looks affronted, "As if I would do _any such thing_," she snaps out. I don't pass comment. She actually has form for doing _precisely_ that, with Harry, so if we get Winky here I'll be watching her. I'm hoping that her past as a Brownie Guide will give her at least _some_ sentimental regard for elf-kind.

After a pause for Petunia to digest what she's been told, I go back to addressing Moody, "Since the subject of inheritances came up, are there such things as wizarding lawyers? I've been looking over the records of the mess Dumbledore let the Ministry make of the Potter estate, and they've sold entailed property in ways that I could get set aside if they'd done it on the muggle side. I'm not hopeful of doing the same on the wizarding side, but getting the bleeders squabbling over money strikes me as, well …"

"Fun way to spend a wet Wednesday? Probably, but don't get y' hopes up. About the only magical jurist who'll work with you _and_ is worth the spit to insult him with is Elphias Doge, and he and Dumbledore have been tight since forever, he's not going to embarrass dear old Albus on your behalf. Plus the current makeup of the Council of Magical Law is mostly people who'll have benefited. I looked it up too, sorry to say it's about standard for that office." Moody has also read the analysis of the shenanigans with the Potter estate. After a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger chat with Huw he sent out copies of the file without billing for it by way of apology.

I sigh. "And by the time I've got myself positioned to be able to out-bribe everyone else, we'll be out of time to start an action?" I've got the _money_ to, I suspect, bury the Wizengamot in gold, and not the cheap Goblin stuff either. Trouble is, you can't just give a dose of Samsonite to a complete stranger: corruption is always part of a long-term relationship and I haven't established any of those. Yet.

"Time doesn't start to run until Harry's twenty-three," Moody tells me. "I know a thing or two myself, I'd help you but I've got a real job."

"Fair enough," I say, "although I'd be obliged for a reading list if you've ever the spare time to write one. Was a lawyer when I was first alive, trained in a much harder school than I suspect most wizard jurists were. Causing some mayhem before the courts might well be a useful trick for when we're winning the peace in a few years' time, those families are in serious need of some disruption."

From the look on his face Moody likes the sound of that, which is of a piece with him preferring Dylan's earlier political stuff. Since he'll be retired from the Aurors in a few years' time - unlike most, who serve as Aurors as a stepping stone to future politics, he's a lifer - there's every chance I'll be able to count on him for help.

"Speaking as we are of matters legal, I checked the register of Knowledgeable Muggles. Mrs. Dursley here is on it, I took the liberty of updating with her married name and new address. How'd you want to proceed with Mr. Dursley and young Dudley? _Technically_ you're in breach of the Statute and I _should_ be making arrests and calling in the Obliviators."

"Tricky," I say, "Petunia's on the list because she's Lily's sister. Can't put Vernon and Dudley on without drawing attention to this address, another of Dumbledore's oversights. You _could_ mention me as the reason for 'em having to know, but that'd still be a way Ministry attention could come here because my presence is not obviously explicable. What we need is a _loophole_. I think I need to read the actual text of the Statute of Secrecy, I flat-out refuse to believe that something drafted in the 17th Century doesn't have a few oddball grandfather clauses and exemptions and savings that can be twisted to fit."

"I'll leave it in your hands. I've carefully not noticed the possible breaches so far for Harry's sake, get at least a legal figleaf over what you're doing while you still can. The other thing I want to take an interest in, just so's I can be reassured I don't have to take a _professional_ interest in it, is how you come to have that body. Unusual thing for a dead man, that. You mentioned alchemists, last time we spoke?"

I shrug. "Nothing particularly exciting about it. It's a clone grown from donated genetic material, accelerated to a biological age of six years. I'm using homebrew ageing potion to appear as an adult when I need to."

He looks more than slightly gobsmacked. "_Grew_ a body?"

"Don't sound so surprised," I tell him with the cheekiest grin I can muster, "women do it every day."

Petunia snorts at that, "He's got this whole joke about 'unskilled labour.' Treat it with the contempt it deserves."

"What?"

"Well, you see, the process of delivering a naturally-grown baby into the world is called 'labour', resulting in a pun or play on words -"

Petunia slaps me across the back of the head. I deserved that.

"Magic can't create life, though -" Moody puts in, leaving the question in his tone. He'd probably have a raised eyebrow, if he still _had_ eyebrows.

"Ah ah," I say, wagging a finger, mentally calling up the pre-planned 'genetics for wizards' spiel I've been working on, "life mostly _isn't _created. Life _replicates_. The thing you want to look up, you'll want muggle libraries, is DNA. Short for Deoxyribonucleic Acid, which is a bit of a mouthful so everyone uses the abbreviation. It's in every cell of every living creature, certainly all the non-magical ones, some of the magical creatures may well make other arrangements, nobody's done the research yet so we don't know. That substance contains the complete blueprint for the organism it's in, yours slightly different from mine, ours from Petunia here. Without rehashing the Birds and the Bees, the DNA in you is half from your mother and half from your father, and theirs from their parents in turn, right back to when life first arose, or was created, you pays your money and takes your theological or abiogenetic choice. The means whereby the DNA creates the organism and all its traits is, well, complicated, but again you can look that up elsewhere. Point is, you started out as two cells, one from each parent, that mixed the DNA together and then you started replicating and thereby growing based on the information that resulted. Bit of alchemy, you can make that happen in a reaction vessel rather than a womb. I started with living matter and grew it like a cutting from a houseplant."

"And this DNA? You mentioned a donation?"

"Yeah, Harry was happy to, since all it involved was rubbing a swab across the inside of his cheek and it'd mean that I'd be effectively his twin brother. Identical twins occur in the wild, of course, and they have identical DNA. I just made the same process happen a few years later than it would have done inside Harry's mum. Hell, if I'd stopped the process at the equivalent of nine months of growth and just lifted the results out and bottle-fed him, Harry would actually _have_ a baby brother."

Moody's nodding along. Copper he may be down to his bootnails, but he's a _wizard_ copper so not the know-nothing proud-of-his-ignorance sort you get so regrettably often on the nonmagical forces. He's in a branch of law enforcement that requires a _lot_ of knowledge: you have to be at least slightly nerdy to even get the entry-level qualifications. "You've a look of a Potter about you, I will say that."

"Harry being happy about it helped the magical part of the process along. The sound of a child's laughter, and all that. Very good for keeping the dark influences out."

He nods. "That'd do it. Be helpful if you documented the whole thing."

"With all the alchemists who helped looking over my shoulder? They'd've had my guts for garters if I didn't. I'm _still_ getting helpful little notes about what I could've done better. Not that there was any great innovation involved, a lot of it's old stuff, just put together in a new way that replicates some stuff they're working on on the nonmagical side. They'll actually be doing this completely without magic in about ten years or so. First mammal they do it with is a sheep, mid nineties some time."

"A sheep?" It's not just Moody looking bemused by that, Petunia's eyebrows are heading for her overpriced perm as well.

"Proof of concept that it can be done with mammals. They need a surrogate mother to implant it in because they don't have magic to make an artificial incubator, and sheep don't complain about that sort of thing. Plus, it's not a commercial enterprise, they're doing it to learn more about the process. Which is good, it means they publish and I can crib off their research, which I'll be reading over the next thirty years or so. Seer, remember, if I read it in the future I can know it in the present."

"This is _muggles_ doing this?" Moody looks like he's having some trouble with this. He might have a notion of muggle culture - he's mentioned having a muggle side to his family, and he can navigate muggle records and courts - but I suspect he and eg. New Scientist are strangers to each other.

"A lot of alchemy requires no magic at all. The muggles kept it up after Secrecy came in - they call it chemistry nowadays - and they've got really good at it. And life is, at its most fundamental, chemistry."

"Yeah, _really_ want to read those notes. How much am I going to have to study to _understand_ them?"

"Quite a lot, I'm sorry to say, although you can skim a lot of it if you just focus on the magical elements. Which are, you'll find, very much not-dark. I included a fair amount that wasn't strictly necessary that was positively light magic. It was the first attempt, and really giving it large with the elements of joy, life and family helped my chances of success along. With enough refinement, we might one day be able to do it as a purely businesslike thing. Be helpful for people who need, say, replacement limbs grown."

"I could take that as an offer, and take it amiss into the bargain." Moody is, of course, a prime candidate for replacing missing body parts with grown replacements. Whether or not that would actually _work_ with curse damage I don't know yet, but that's why we do experiments. If he was at home to bribes, it would be an ideal one.

"It's not an offer. That sort of application is years off, and nobody with anything at all to lose should be relying on cloned homunculus bodies until the likes of me have confirmed that this definitely works long-term. I mean, in _theory_ this body is exactly equivalent to an organically gestated one, but the practical results won't be confirmed until I've lived a good few years of normal human lifetime in it. I was dead, so I was an ideal candidate for the experiment: nothing to lose, you see?" There's a body-swapping ritual - Tom learned it as a possibility for his own immortality - that _might_ make full-body transplants possible, but it'd have to be carefully reworked before I would consider it. That one isn't just Dark Magic, it's Magic For Complete Arseholes. Worth it as a back-burner project, though.

I get the file out and take Moody through it, while Petunia heads off for an unspecified GP appointment and after that to collect the boys from school. Thankfully, the minimum standard for being an Auror - of Moody's generation, he's mildly scathing of the new kids coming through, but I put that down to standard old-bloke whining - includes a solid grasp of the magical theory that the dark arts are grounded in. Not just the true Dark Arts, the magics fuelled by the ills of the human heart (hatred, wrath, the will to power over others, the things that the theorists all call _maleficium_ in a rare display of consistency) but the wider category of transgressive magic, the stuff that requires illegal or immoral acts to work. He's not just satisfied that it isn't dark magic, but also that he's okay with me having had a five-year-old child present for it. Like I'd've risked Madame Flamel's wrath by upsetting a child.

He does point out that there are laws regulating magical experimentation that I have broken left, right and centre. They are, however, considerably beneath his jurisdiction as an auror. When the Committee on Experimental Charms decides to prosecute, they bring in the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol to serve the summons. Although, according to Moody, they hardly ever prosecute anyone for anything, since most people either do their paperwork properly or don't bother the neighbours enough to get a complaint made.

"The big question I'm left with, though, is how come you've got magic if you used to be a muggle?"

"Yeah, that's a tricky one. Look, you understand that the only way a secret stays secret is if everyone that knows it is dead, right? And even then it's not perfect since necromancy is a thing."

"Granted. I'm more'n a bit resistant to most forms of interrogation, if it helps."

"Oh, I assumed as much. The thing is, I didn't _come_ back, I was _sent_. And, so far, I have never spoken aloud as to who by." Moody didn't think to ask Petunia about how I got to be magical, although she _did_ volunteer that I'd spoken to Lily on the Other Side. Harry is a direct witness to me getting my magic, of course, although nobody treats five-year-olds as obvious subjects for interview, not even the likes of Moody. Paranoid he may be, but he still has _some_ of the regular blind spots. "The problem I've got is that any detail I offer - and for what it's worth you have my assurance that no dark arts were involved - is a crack that the chief bad guy is smart enough to pry open to get at the secret and him knowing anything about it would be an utter _disaster_. With hindsight, I should've been cagier about how I came to be where I am and what I am, so at the moment I'm relying on the information being in the hands of people the bugger won't think to abduct and interrogate. You, however, are in a capture-prone trade and I have this horrible vision of you waking up with a bunch of missing memories and a belly full of Unctuous Unction and a new best friend with a poised quill."

"I'm not _easy_ to capture," he observes.

"Not the same as impossible. There's at least one set of futures where you get captured and impersonated. Mostly by Barty Crouch junior, as it happens. I had more than one reason to take him off the board, and I wasn't entirely ruling out summary execution."

"Or murder, as we in the law-enforcement community like to call it."

"Well, in a peacetime context that _is_ what it'd be. I'm calling him an unlawful combatant guilty of grave crimes against the laws of war. Sneaking out of jail like that is perfidy, if nothing else, and he was _in _for torture to start with, which he should've hanged for."

"Not arguing about the hanging, although we use the Dementor's Kiss -"

"Barbarism," I put in, which it is. I have no qualms about capital punishment in wartime - in peacetime it's a straight-up bad idea if you know _anything_ about how criminal justice works - but adding the horror of being devoured by blasphemous abominations is just disgusting.

"As may be. Point I'm driving at - and don't think I haven't noticed that you've changed the subject - is that we're supposed to bring 'em in, not kill them out of hand."

"_You're_ supposed to bring 'em in. You're a busy. Sometimes it's good politics to treat a war like crime and punishment - like what's going on in Northern Ireland, they're not shooting the provos they capture, they learned from _that_ mistake in 1916 - but every bit of wizarding justice from the wizengamot on down is just too broken to make that work. And it _is_ a war, and it isn't over. We've got a temporary armistice at best, against an opponent who're preparing all manner of perfidy against the day hostilities start again. All I'm asking for you on this point is to ask me no questions I'd have to tell you lies about, but there is going to come a point where the proportionate response to the enemy's perfidy - and I'm using that word in its strict legal sense, it's a crime against the laws of war and has been since long before the Hague and Geneva conventions - will include warlike operations in reprisal. Which will mean killing at least _some_ of the bleeders."

Moody takes a moment to think that over. I _know_ he's nearer my opinions than Dumbledore's on this sort of thing, and I'm not trying to persuade him over the line that circumscribes his role as an auror. I do want to move him - and any of his colleagues he can persuade - closer to it _and_ look the other way when I - and whoever I can get on board to help - start fighting back in earnest. I'm _hoping_ that couching the argument in legalistic terms will tickle his policing instincts.

"You haven't specifically stated an intention to commit a specific crime. Let's leave it at that. I've got to say that if I do get wind of such as you mention, it's going to put me in a very hard place. I'm one of the louder malcontents at the Ministry, but that don't mean I'm not true to my salt, if you take my meaning."

"Loud and clear." Between the lines, he's telling me that as long as I don't get caught he's not going to lose any sleep over it.

He nods. I should imagine that if we fail to the point of an actual war breaking out he won't be waiting for the Crouch Authorisations this time around. "As for the original point, how you got to be magical?"

"Still going with 'no comment' on that one, sorry. Unless I can be _sure_ that the opposition can't replicate it, or use the fact of the possibility as propaganda, I'm keeping my mouth firmly shut."

"Propaganda?"

"They're _already_ claiming that muggles are stealing magic for their own children. _Really_ don't want it getting out that someone who was a muggle now has magic, they'll say I stole it and it's evidence that they were right about the muggleborns all along. Horseshit from start to finish, of course, but so far the only people who know that about me are you, Dumbledore, and the three alchemists who were my main helpers, and _none_ of you know the details." Not strictly true: Perenelle Flamel and Sam Hartlib both got the full story, but they don't interact with the wizarding world at all. I'm _assuming _Perenelle told Nicolas, it's the sort of thing he takes an interest in. Harry also knows, but I'm not pointing a loaded Moody at a six-year-old.

"Don't like it, but, aye, I see the sense in not saying anything. And," he muses, "I don't have any evidence that it's dark magic."

"If you run into it again, _look_ for that evidence. What happened to me was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke that I wasn't expecting. _Making_ it happen, I'm pretty sure, could only be done with some fairly nasty and heavy-duty dark arts. Which is why I don't want it out there that it's even possible, when all's said and done. Don't want to give the buggers _ideas_."

"I'll drink to _that_," he says, raising his mug, "they've got enough of their own to be going on with. One last thing for today, though. If I go looking for muggles named Malcolm Reynolds, what am I going to find?"

"Not me. As I see it, you get a new name when you're born, I'm entitled to a new name after I died. And, bluntly, as far as my family are concerned dad died in a road accident and that's an end of it. The last thing they need is wizarding bollocks intruding on their grief. I picked the name from one of my favourite telly characters, from a show that'll be made in about twenty years. Benefit of being a seer, I get to watch stuff when before it's even made."

Moody huffs his amusement. "Not just scholarly papers you foresee, then?"

"Nope. Show's going to be called Firefly, you'll be retired by then and it's worth getting a telly for, trust me on this. If things are settled here by then, I might even go visit the production company and convince them not to cancel it after thirteen episodes, which they do in most of the futures I've foreseen. And, for the record, the Star Wars movies after the first three are all tripe apart from Rogue One, but the telly series are all pretty good."

Moody waves off my predictions for muggle popular culture with evident amusement, before taking his leave. Reiterating his warning about the Statute of Secrecy issue - which _is_ within his jurisdiction, but currently in the no-harm-no-foul category so he's exercising his discretion - he apparates out just before the boys get home. Probably as well, Harry's not yet confident with strangers, and they don't come much stranger than Moody's face.

It's the day after Moody has left that I get to Flourish and Blotts and find a book that includes the full text of the International Statute of Secrecy - not amended since it was adopted by unanimous resolution of the Wizengamot back in 1693 - and a couple of hours with notepad and highlighter finds me a truly _hilarious_ possibility. It won't even cost that much.

-oOo-

Moody raising the subject of my life as a muggle spurs me on to a bit of investigation, so the next night I leave my body sleeping and apparate north. I appear over the summit of Parlick Pike, a location I'm familiar enough with by day and by night that I'm _sure_ is the same back here in the eighties as it was when I was last here in the summer of 2019. I don't like to think what the consequences would be of trying to go somewhere that hasn't been built yet, or won't look like my mental picture of it for years to come. From here I can see the summit of Beacon Fell, which lets me apparate _there_.

Beacon Fell is a lot more like my dim recollection of going there as a kid than any of my more recent visits. The forest - godawful Forestry Commission serried ranks of non-native evergreens - is only man-high at this date. It'll be full grown by the twenty-teens, and subject to widespread calls to fell the lot and plant a _proper_ forest. The trig pillar is where I remember it being, though, and on the horizon I can see Blackpool Tower lit up against the dim purple of the late summer evening. That gives me one bearing, and the lights of Longridge and Preston give me two more.

After that, it's a quarter-hour of line-of-sight apparations in the direction I need to go, picking up landmarks one after another.

It brings me to the home I was living in with my oh-so-loving family back in '86. I want to know if this universe's version of me can be helped in some way. As I've mentioned, not as bad off as Harry, but still having a rough go of it. Siblings too. It's a neighbourhood almost _exactly_ like the one the Dursleys inhabit: a cul-de-sac of twenty-odd houses built to four different designs. Mixed up a little better than the Magnolia Road Estate in Little Whinging, but then not every housebuilder is quite so clueless.

That there's something wrong is obvious right away: by this point in history there should be the upstairs extension built and the loft conversion done. They aren't. The conversion of the integral garage into an indoor room is done and the replacement garage out back is built, but all of the work upstairs that I remember helping with as a young lad? Hasn't happened yet although it _should_ have.

I _could_ put that down to them having moved away. Speaking in my capacity as Master Of the Bleeding Obvious there were definite problems in that house and while divorce was a lot less common in the eighties it wasn't _unknown_ so it's possible that my parents, in this universe, got over their mutual Stockholm Syndrome and split up and I'm about to invade the privacy of whoever bought the place.

What's stopping me is that here, in this most extremely muggle of neighbourhoods, I can hear magic. I shouldn't be able to. Twenty years before this particular night, the spot where I'm floating indecisively wondering what to do next was a field full of cows. There just hasn't been _time_ for wizards to move in, never mind them having any reason to buy one of these places. Let alone the one I spent my teenage years in.

The sound - high, shrill, atonal piping - is coming from my old house, so after a moment to centre myself - there are some painful memories for me here - I advance on the property line. As I approach something detects my presence, and a signboard twists into existence from thin air, startling me terribly.

_What the fucking FUCK?_

DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL ACCIDENTS AND CATASTROPHES

**BEWARE**

HAZARDOUS MAGIC ON THESE PREMISES, APPROACH NO CLOSER.

By Order, C. Fudge, Investigator, DMAC

There's a note attached in small print that states that on or about 23rd August 1981 a magical accident of unknown origin took place on these premises rendering them uninhabitable for a period estimated at not less than thirteen years. Whether that's a real estimate or just a standard it-ought-to-be-gone-by-then period I don't know, and the note only warns that the property has been deemed safe to remain undemolished under muggle-repelling charms but represents a particular hazard to magical persons. There are no other details.

Now I've come close enough to see the sign, I can see the house itself clear of the spells that were obscuring its true appearance. The garden is overgrown, the windows filthy and cracked, one of them outright missing, and litter and detritus has piled up in every available nook and cranny. Blown in where the rest of the neighbourhood can't see it any more, it has accumulated in drifts and heaps.

_What happened?_ I wonder.

I decide to ignore the sign - I'm a lot less susceptible to damage than I am when corporeal, and confident I can bug out fast enough if I don't let myself get taken by surprise - and press forward a few feet up the driveway.

_Malignity_. _Nails on a blackboard, the wild eyes of a dog about to bite, the whimpers of a terrified child, the shiver of a walked-over grave. And oh god, the smell of blood._

I stop. It's not the putrid filth of Tommy-boy's magical leavings, but it's still nasty. Cornered, vicious, rabid animal nasty at that.

Absolutely _no way_ am I going any further with this until I know a lot more than I currently do. I've got an address and a date and plenty of money. Investigation is therefore trivial, and the house won't get any more abandoned in the meantime.

I am, of course, limited to strictly muggle means of investigation, and I should do most if not all of it myself. My old family have clearly _already_ had magical trouble, serious enough to drive them out of their home, I don't want to be adding to it. Plus, me taking an interest in this family is a potential clue to the time travel aspect and the last thing I want to do is leave breadcrumbs that the enemy can follow to _that_ particular disaster. It's an even bigger bombshell than the getting-magic thing which even Moody felt ought to be compartmentalised.

Until that's done, however, I have far too little information to even _begin_ to speculate.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

I owned a decidedly-clapped-out Mark IV Spitfire for about eleven months in the mid 90s, until I discovered that I could either restore the thing or afford the insurance, not both, on the pay of a very junior lawyer. It was going to be even more of a white elephant when the baby arrived. Absolutely _lovely_ car, though, if you kept ahead of the maintenance.

The bit about older driving licenses qualifying you for an alarmingly broad range of vehicles is no exaggeration: I passed my test in '88 and am qualified on things I've never driven and wouldn't know how to. Including, at the time, tanks. (Tracked vehicles are now on a separate test). The UK driving test _is_ quite stringent, though. Most people would rather hang than have to try and pass a second one, it's among the penalties for motoring offences and regarded as one of the harsher ones.

Wizarding population: there are as many guesses about this as there are commentators on the Potterverse (JKR's pronouncements aren't worthy of note; they don't make sense in the context of what we see in the books.) and I've gone with a magical society that _isn't_ majority wizard-and-witch simply because a society big enough to support a full quidditch league that consisted entirely of wand-wielders wouldn't be _able_ to hide the way they do, but which still has the numbers to support eg. a quidditch league. If you think that it makes a nonsense of the stated aims of the Death Eaters for wizarding Britain to be like this, well, sure. It's not like any of the other steaming piles of racist claptrap that litter history made any objective sense in _their_ contexts either.

Wizarding law: I don't propose to infodump heavily about my thoughts on how the legal system of a tiny society of magic-users might work and also generate the things we see in the books. Rest assured I _have_ worked it out, and will explain as I go along. The loophole in the statute of secrecy will come up later. It's the kind of thing that happened all the time in 17th century legislatures and will let me take advantage of one of the more picturesque bits of English real property law.

"Dose of Samsonite" - Samsonite brand briefcases were, for quite some time, the packaging of choice for large amounts of anonymous cash and bearer bonds when tendered as 'arrangement fees' and 'consultancy payments'. How the figure of speech arises is, I trust, obvious.

My statements about the laws of war should not be taken as legal advice for your particular situation: always consult your lawyer before engaging in warlike operations or committing atrocities. (More seriously: it's a figleaf argument that only passes the laugh test because of the jurisdictional muddle that the separation of magical and muggle worlds creates.)

_Maleficium_ is a term for malevolent magical practise that was coined in _the_ witch-hunting manual of the 15th Century, the _Malleus Maleficarum._ Which also advanced the proposition that harmful magic was _only_ worked by women, because the authors weren't just murdering, torturing gits, they were misogynist pricks into the bargain. It takes some doing for the late medieval Catholic Church to sack you for being an arsehole, but the authors of _Malleus Maleficarum_ managed it. (That their work was then used as the field manual for protestant witch-hunting, which was much more … enthusiastic than the catholic version, is one of those amusing little quirks of history.)

Moody's a busy in the sense that 'a busy' and 'the busies' are Liverpool dialect for 'a policeman' and 'the police' respectively. If you want to hear the scouse accent, the most reliable source is Dave Lister in Red Dwarf, which is all over Youtube. You could also look up Brookside, a soap opera set in Liverpool, but not all the characters in that are scousers. The ones that _are_ do use some scouse dialect, although a lot less than the real life versions do.

And oooh, yes, a new mystery.

Fanfic recommendation: The Perils of Innocence by avidbeader, which is only on FFN to my knowledge. In which Harry gets dumped by the Dursleys in residential care, to his considerable benefit. Very well put together, surprisingly well read-in on British life for a US (I think) writer, and includes a _priceless_ interaction between the distinctly _parvenu _(even if they're not, they _act_ like it) Malfoys and the actually-aristocratic Finch-Fletchleys.


	17. So it goes

DISCLAIMER: Is child abuse remarkably prominent but thoroughly glossed over throughout the Harry Potter books? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Chapter 17

_I am, of course, limited to strictly muggle means of investigation, and I should do most if not all of it myself. My old family have clearly already had magical trouble, serious enough to drive them out of their home, I don't want to be adding to it. Plus, me taking an interest in this family is a potential clue to the time travel aspect and the last thing I want to do is leave breadcrumbs that the enemy can follow to that particular disaster. It's an even bigger bombshell than the getting-magic thing which even Moody felt ought to be compartmentalised._

_Until that's done, however, I have far too little information to even begin to speculate. _

-oOo-

I don't get much done for the rest of August, since I'm spending a lot of time devising and enacting educational and enriching activities for Harry and Dudley. Translation: We're hanging out and playing, mostly working through Dudley's backlog of educational toys. Including, to my enormous delight, the top-of-the-line Thomas Salter Chemistry Set that I was never allowed to have as a kid.

Dudley, to my mild surprise - the lad has been coming right out of himself with a bit of attention, between his dad and me - takes to science and the underlying mathematics like a duck to water. When I mention this to Vernon, he arranges a trip to one of Grunnings' labs to see the experiments in action - they're working on plasma deposition, which is the coming thing in drillbit coatings, we're told - and both boys get enthused about science. I have the brainwave of telling Dudley that if he learns his science he'll be able to do at least some alchemy, which is quite close to magic, and I can see his eyes light up. Harry was already keen on the idea because that's what Nana Perenelle is all about.

There's no real chance that Dudley will get far enough to start doing authentically magical stuff. Only one muggle alchemist in history managed that: Robert Boyle, and he had a _lot_ of help. And was - still is, I'm told - a genius, which Dudley, for all he might well have hidden depths, _ain't_.

Every other weekend I take ageing potion and we go on excursions to see cool stuff small boys will enjoy. Stuffing a small child behind the seats of a two-seater sports car is a massive adventure for whichever of them it is that gets to ride that way but mildly illegal and I appear to have caught the contemporary slack attitude to vehicular safety. I start planning a 2+2 coupé conversion: I'll need to get 'er resprayed again after, but reshaping the bodywork and fitting seat brackets shouldn't be too hard, it barely counts as transfiguration. I'll lose some boot space, is all.

Petunia is glad of the respite, her health has taken a turn for the worse that she assures me her GP says is nothing to worry about and will pass in a few weeks. I take her at her word. Once the boys are back at school I make myself busy buying real estate: there's a nice 4-bedroom detached on Wisteria Walk that has become available and, house-buying chains being what they are, I should have it by Christmas at the latest and probably sooner.

I also buy a couple of hundred acres of fourth-rate grouse moor, subject to a long list of grazing rights and the last fifteen years of a shooting lease, in what was the historic county of Westmorland but is now Cumbria. I've picked it because it's part of the old manor of Hangleton, and a bit of research with the brokers for such things tells me that the lordship of the manor went on the market a few years previous and while any manor lordship would have done for my purposes, this one is amusingly apropos. The historic boundaries take in Little and Great Hangleton (known locally as Upper and Nether Hangleton, never mind what's painted on the road signs) and the hamlets of Bottom Laithe and Lingy Pits.

It's a steal at five grand, and while the only one of the feudal perquisites still attached to the dignity is the right to hold a Lammastide Market Fair - which if I settle there I might resurrect as a beer festival or similar - what it does mean is that the Land Registry now has me down as Lord of the Manor and I'm entitled to have that noted on my passport when I get one. I didn't need to buy the land to buy the lordship, but for it to count for my purposes I do actually have to hold land within the manor and a house would be an obvious target.

The tricky part is getting Vernon and Dudley to do their bit.

Vernon, for his part, falls about laughing. "You want me to do what?"

"Make oath as my sworn manor bailiff, and Dudley and Harry as my men-at-arms," I tell him, grinning back, "it makes you knowing about magic completely legal because you'll be officially my feudal vassals."

"I knew the magical folk were a lot of crackpots, but -?" Vernon trails off and shrugs his bewilderment at the lunacy of it.

"Well," I tell him, "it's a law passed in the 1690s that never got updated. Among the things the wizards don't have is a Law Commission to go through the books to deal with things like that. And don't forget, this stuff is on the books on our side too: I've spent a bit of money and now I'm a lord. Which is crackpot nonsense all by itself."

"Picturesque, I call it," Vernon says, with a sly look on his face, "it's only crackpottery if it's a wizard doing it. Us normal folk, we have picturesque traditions."

I chuckle, impressed in spite of myself. That was actually quite a good bit of self-deprecating humour by Vernon's standards. It might just be that he's acquiring a bit of self-esteem. We make progress, indeed we do.

When I told the solicitor I retained for the conveyancing of the land and title what I was going to do - we're going to need a Commissioner for Oaths and all solicitors hold that office - he got a laugh out of it, too, although the reason I gave _him_ was that Dudley, 'my nephew's foster-brother' wants to be a knight and this is the nearest I can get for the boys. So long as I don't personally train either Vernon or Dudley (or pay for their training) in any kind of warlike skill, it doesn't break the laws on private armies. For the statutory five quid per head for the oath-swearing fee it's a remarkably cheap transaction.

It's going to be about five minutes work a year for Vernon, banking the rent cheques from the farmers and the guy who owns the shooting rights, and some fun games for the boys dressing up as medieval fighters, in return for a land grant in leasehold of a square foot each of my garden on Wisteria Walk - Dudley wants to plant a tree in his, bless him - and they're all going to be my sworn feudal retainers. Which quite large stretches of the world still had in 1692, and more than a few wizards and witches wanted their household staff and, yes, private armies, in on the secret of magic, so there's an exemption in the Statute of Secrecy. Most of it fell by the wayside over the centuries since, but the law was never amended. It would have taken a full-dress international agreement, which aren't trivial to arrange. As soon as we have Vernon and Dudley's formal oaths sworn and the leaseholds registered, they are officially and lawfully Knowledgeable Muggles entitled to be registered as such, and exempt from Obliviation.

While that's going on, I have a media monitoring service run by a Manchester PR firm looking into various aspects of the life and times of my old home county over the last ten years, drawn widely enough that I can pick out the information I want from reports that include a much wider trawl of information. Wouldn't do to have records pointing specifically at one house that's known to the Ministry, after all.

What I learn is that on the night in question emergency services were called to a gas explosion at my old house, in which an entire family of six people were killed. There were calls for a public inquiry into gas safety standards (which wouldn't help, my father was an indefatigable DIY-er and this was in the days before you needed a Gas Safety Certificate to sell a house: he did all his own gas fitting, the idiot, it's a wonder any of us lived to adulthood) and quotes from concerned neighbours. Some of whom I'm going to re-visit for some surreptitious legilimency to see if there are any exploitable flaws in the memory charms, because they sound decidedly out of character for the people I remember.

Of course 'gas explosion' is the cover story of choice for quite a large number of events the press and public doesn't need to know about, and it would appear that at least one of my siblings was a muggleborn witch or wizard. Or my counterpart in this universe is, which is a bit of a surprise. Nobody of the same surname as me turned up in the books, after all but then they wouldn't if they died in '81. What remains for me to discover is whether alternate-me getting my Hogwarts letter - the incident is at about the right time - prompted a visit from the Death Eaters (in which case someone's in for a really surprising vengeance) or this version of my parents were bad enough that one of us spawned a monster that killed everyone.

Figuring that out, I'm going to have to ruminate on.

-oOo-

"You! Off, one minute! That was a dangerous tackle and this is a game, not a fight. Be more careful next time! Free kick!" It's a pick-up game on the park, it's my turn among the dads (and in my case 'uncle' whose 'other nephew' is 'off visiting family') to be referee - taking over for Vernon, who has quietly admitted that he doesn't personally care for footy, so he's sharing out the coldbox full of drinks he's brought - and Lord the little savages are playing up today.

Obviously we can't give out red cards, it's just supervised football on the local rec, but by the same token, it's _supervised_ football so we do have to at least try and civilise the little heathens out of their tendency to leg-breaker tackles, shirt-pulling, sneaky handballs and pretending not to understand the offside rule. So it's sent off for a minute for anything that'd be a yellow card offence, and a telling-off into the bargain if it was an immediate red card infraction. We've noticed that the ones whose dads are actually present tend to behave a little better.

"Come on, Harry, up you get," I tell him. He's sprawled in the centre circle, cropped as he was looking for an open teammate. A second or two more and he'd have had the ball at the feet of one of his team's self-designated strikers - they're eschewing the traditional 4-4-2 for what looks like a 2-2-6 formation, because that's how small boys play football - but the other team's frantic rush to defend after Dudley cleared it from the goal line right to his foster-brother's feet more or less stampeded him under. Smallest kid on the pitch and Harry's not even slightly intimidated, he's playing up his wizard durability and with what looks like a natural instinct for ball games. Because there's no way _my_ coaching got him that good with a ball at his feet.

The free kick - Harry takes it, and I honestly can't tell if it's accidental magic or he's really Bending It Like Beckham - goes through to what we're calling the penalty box, one of the bigger kids heads it across and it gets more or less scrambled through the goalmouth by two kids who immediately start arguing about who had last touch. I make them toss a coin for it - I couldn't tell, being too far away, I'm quick on my feet in my new body but not that quick - and my turn as referee is over. We're changing over every time a goal is scored.

"You're in bloody good shape for a banker," DC Polkiss tells me as I grab a bottle of orange juice from Vernon's coldbox. It's a cool day as October goes in Surrey, but I've just spent the last ten minutes keeping up with two dozen hyperactive little boys.

"Lot of time spent in hotels, and it's either the hotel gym or call-girls for entertainment. Since a lot of those jobs were out in third-world shitholes, the local talent tended to have things unknown to medical science. So that was the choice: match fitness, or incurable galloping clap." This is not from personal experience, but a chap I was at university with went into merchant banking and it was a story he told during a reunion night.

The story gets me a laugh, because Surrey suburbanites don't see the fundamental _problem_ with first world bankers lording it over the developing world and their problems. I choke down the urge to try a little political conscience-prodding.

"Here, there's that dog again," someone says, and sure enough, there's a big black animal nosing about the shrubbery at the far end of the rec.

_Well, hello Padfoot, _I think. I might be jumping to conclusions, here, but as summer meandered into autumn, Moody has been telephoning on the regular with updates on the situation with Pettigrew, Crouch, Crouch Junior, and Black. Life in Azkaban, Life in Azkaban, Dementor's Kiss, and released into convalescent care respectively. I've bought Moody a pager so I can get in touch in return: he doesn't have a phone of his own and we're a bit early in history for mobiles that aren't the size and heft of breeze-blocks.

Of course, it might not be Black at all. It _could_ just be a random large black dog that just happens to be hanging around while Harry is playing football. I mean, dogs _naturally_ make a complete mess of trying to act nonchalant and like they're not watching one kid in particular.

"He doesn't look like he's a problem dog," I say, "although from the looks he's out on unauthorised walkies. I used to have a dog that did that a lot. Proper little Houdini, he was. Always out wandering on his own. But god help me if I slacked off on the walks _I_ took the little bugger on."

More laughs, and in the moment of distraction the dog vanishes. I have _no idea_ what Black is up to, beyond checking in on Harry. Much depends on whether he's listening to Dumbledore or Moody: I know Moody has had a word and suggested a polite, calm approach and what he understands to be the reason for Pettigrew's capture, but I have no idea what Dumbledore has said.

-oOo-

We get back from the footy and, as we are all _firmly_ instructed to do, go to the back door so as not to track mud all over the hall carpet. There are now _two_ women of the house, and both of them approach the issue of domestic hygiene with a serious-minded fervour you don't normally see outside student politics.

Petunia and Winky are at the kitchen table with tea and biscuits - never a good sign, Winky has been here barely more than a month and has a serious Party Rings habit already: an elf on a sugar high is an unholy terror - and from the looks they've been hitting the neighbourhood gossip hard. After the shock of getting clothes from Crouch, Winky came to Privet Drive like it was the last oasis in the Sahara and Moody had given her a map to it.

It took her less than a week to get settled in and find that she had a kindred spirit in Petunia as regards cleanliness, tidiness and Keeping Up Appearances. The existence of Brownie Guides, named for and adhering to the values of her people, was a joyful revelation to her and learning that Petunia was a veteran of same formed an immediate rapport. Petunia, for her part, discovered that having a partner-in-gossip capable of invisible snooping set her on course to be the absolute _queen_ of the neighbourhood busybodies. Winky, in her smart little tea-dress and pinafore stitched together from yellow dusters - Petunia laid in a stock, and a selection of sewing patterns and supplies - has _gone native_.

"If you would, Winky?" I ask, indicating my muddy boots, and two grinning muddy boys. Vernon's bringing up the rear and nowhere near so encrusted.

"How is you getting so _filthy?_" Winky demands to know, snapping her fingers to get the worst off us.

"Football, Winky," Harry tells her, grinning through the filth, "If you're not covered in mud, you haven't been having fun." That's a direct quote from me, as it happens. Harry's fastidiousness takes a back seat on the footy pitch.

"I was goalie," Dudley tells her, relying on Winky's soft spot for him to get away with being head-to-toe with goalmouth cack. Give the little chunk credit, he's not afraid to eat dirt in the cause of keeping a clean sheet, and his response to being outnumbered in his own penalty box would shame a viking. There are probably a few cuts and bruises under the mud, and he's been favouring his left leg as he squelched home. It is, he assured us, the good kind of hurt.

Petunia snorts in amusement. She's less unhappy about the boys coming home covered in shite now she's got Winky to help.

"Muddied oafs at the goal," Vernon quotes, in a vague and musing sort of way. He doubtless has fond memories of coming home wearing half the park from his own youth.

"Was always more of a flannelled fool at the wicket, myself," I respond. "Right, showers, you two. Dudley especially, that goalmouth was _hangin'_."

"_Don't_ touch anything on your way up," Petunia says, "but before you go we have an announcement."

"Oh, is it that time already?" Vernon asks, with an unreadable smile on his face, "I wasn't paying attention to the calendar, Pet."

"Well, the morning sickness has subsided at last," she says, "especially as Winky was good enough to get me a potion for it."

"Old Mistress used the same potion," Winky avers, "so Winky knew what to ask the 'pothecary for, and the goblinses give lots of Galleons for muggle money."

"Huh." I hadn't thought about that. Petunia's a squib, so potions work for her. Should've thought of that. I get her _meaning_ immediately, of course, although I do wonder how I missed the signs. Not that I was particularly making note of what times of day she was puking.

Both boys are looking confused. "Dudley," Petunia says, "you're going to have a little brother or sister. Harry, a new cousin. I'm going to have a baby."

"Winky can't tell yet if it's to be a boy or girl, not until baby grows more." Winky is _vibrating_ in her seat. She's been an absolute treasure with the boys, I can see her being a godsend with the new baby. Another inhabitant for what I'm sure she quietly thinks of as _her_ house.

"Been wondering," Vernon says in diffident tone, "if there's any way to tell if littlun has, you know …" he waggles his fingers in the casting-a-spell gesture he uses to mean _magic_.

"Not as far as I know," I tell him, "if there was a reliable way of knowing that before their magic comes in, magical families wouldn't do horrible things to try and scare magic out of their children." I spare a silent thought of sympathy for poor Neville Longbottom. Thrown into the sea off one of Blackpool's piers? Surviving that should've clued everyone that he was magical: not drowning in _those_ waters if you fall in isn't just magic, it's a fucking _miracle_.

"Well, it's all one to me," Petunia says, "Magic has its _uses_, but I have to say I've not been impressed with most of those that have it." I choose to take that as a reference to Dumbledore and Snape, and James Potter in his pureblood cluelessness. She _was_ back on christmas-present terms with her sister before the end, and is oddly fond of Moody. About which last I'm a bit baffled, but nobody ever promised me that everything would make sense all the time.

Winky's nodding along. "Elveses can't tell either. Mistress Petunia already asked Winky. Winky is sorry."

Both boys look gobsmacked. "Shower!" I remind them, bending down to get my boots off. Winky will have them clean and shined before I'm showered and changed and back down for lunch. I've told her I don't particularly care to be done for, just a personal preference and I'm pretty sure I know which bit of my childhood that hangup comes from, but Winky absolutely does _not_ give a shit. Fortunately I'll have a refuge to retreat to soon, once the contractors are finished with my house on Wisteria Walk and it's up to the standards I'm used to.

"Congratulations, you two," I say once I'm able to step inside without getting lynched by a houseproud elf, "how far along?"

"Three months," Petunia says, "I'm hoping for a girl."

"One of each," Vernon remarks, apparently under the impression I can't count, although I restrain my urge to sarcasm. He's been cheerful and easygoing for weeks. I'd put it down to getting laid regular - it certainly is the spur for him getting to the gym twice a week and watching what he eats, not that I needed the bloody details he furnished me with - but apparently he's full of himself with impending new fatherhood. It's not in me to begrudge him his joy.

"Quick work," I remark with a grin. Because I _can_ count. Petunia must've caught less than a week after I stopped possessing Vernon.

Vernon grins and buffs his nails on his Barbour, earning an eyeroll from Petunia. Winky has vanished, doubtless to see to the boys.

I'm going to have to take some time to think about this. The bun in Petunia's oven is entirely off the map the books draw. What caused this, beyond the obvious? Did getting more comfortable with magic move Petunia to come off the pill because she was no longer afraid of having a little wizard or witch? Did the improvement in Vernon's health make him capable of doing the deed, or is it the improvement in Vernon's appearance that made Petunia rekindle her interest in sex with Vernon?

I've been making a point of respect for the Dursleys' privacy recently - which is how I missed the pregnancy, of course - and I decide this doesn't count as a safety-of-Harry issue so I'll probably never know. Probably don't _want_ to know, come right to it. It _does_ mean Harry's getting something more like an actual family during his time at Privet Drive, so I resolve to just take the win without questioning it further.

More important, and a question for the future, is whether they're right to worry about having a magical child. The genetics of magic is a vexed question, and the writing on the subject on the magical side is a collection of superstitions at best and overt racism at worst. The interesting question is whether it's purely genetic or whether there's more to it than that. Has being possessed for a year done anything to change whatever it is about Vernon that meant his firstborn was as unmagical as him?

-oOo-

It's another week before I see Black again.

I had had all kinds of scenarios planned out for sidling up to him while he was doing his half-arsed surveillance - half-arsed measured against Moody, who I'm not good enough to spot until his magic goes active enough to hear - and buttonholing him.

What actually happens is that, shortly after Petunia gets back from walking the boys to school, the doorbell rings. From where I'm sat in the dining room, boxing and coxing between a pile of O-Level revision guides and alchemy texts, I can hear Petunia getting a little flustered, and then reading out the laminated card I made for her with the guest-right words. Whoever's giving the responses is male, youngish.

"... just through here, Mr. Black," are the first words I hear clearly from Petunia, "I have things to be getting on with so I'll leave you to it. Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?"

There's a murmur in response and the door opens. I stand up and walk around the table to extend a hand, looking up from my kid's height. "Sirius Black, I presume?"

"Ah, yes," he says, looking a little taken aback, "I was, uh, expecting someone older."

I sort of was, too. I mean, my mental picture of him is still the mid-forties Gary Oldman even though literally nobody I've met so far looks anything like the actors who played them. The man who just walked in doesn't look a day past thirty. He's _actually_ in his mid twenties, but a few years of Azkaban have clearly taken their toll.

And, hilariously, he _does_ look like someone I recognise: me. Or, rather, my pre-mortem self, just with different coloured eyes. It's true what they say: there's only so many faces to go around. My brother once met my exact double working as a security guard at an airport in Italy, which means that in this universe there are actually three copies of that face walking around. Well, two, since one of them apparently died in '81. Oh, there are differences, he's missing the facial scar from the suicide attempt, and at a guess he's half a head shorter than my old self was, the hairline is just a little higher and the hair not as solid a black, and he either doesn't have the mutant teeth I was born with or wizarding orthodontics has been deployed. He's in not-obviously-wizardly attire, wearing what looks like a Marks & Spencer first-court-appearance suit, but with a dress shirt. If he's going to stick around we're going to have to work on his grasp of subtle details.

"Age is a bit of a vexed question with me, Mr. Black," I tell him. "I mean, I've got birth certificates for seven and thirty-one, this body came of the vat at the end of June, I've celebrated a fiftieth birthday, and I've spent long enough entirely outside time that I can't really put a reliable number on how long I've been around."

"Huh. Moody _said_ talking to you could be offsetting." He shakes my hand anyway.

"Have a seat," I tell him, "there'll be tea and biscuits shortly, I don't doubt. Winky is entirely without fear or favour in enforcing standards of hospitality."

Black furrows his brow. "An elf? In a muggle home?"

I grin back. "Majority magical, actually, since Petunia has magic. Just not enough to attract a Hogwarts letter. If she'd been born to a magical family, they'd call her a squib. Vernon and Dudley are the only non-magicals, muggles as you'd call them, living here. She was with the Crouches, I trust you heard the story?"

"That that wasn't Mrs. Crouch I saw buried? I heard. Removed a big obstacle to me getting a trial when old Barty Senior was arrested."

"Well, when he got arrested he ripped off his tie and gave it to her, although what he thought she'd done to deserve it I have no idea. I think Petunia's going to have it framed, she's so pleased to have an elf here. They get on famously."

"This Petunia - the one at the door?" I nod, "She's Lily's sister?"

"The very same."

"Huh. I remember Lily and her not getting on so well, she didn't like magic."

"They didn't, although it wasn't so much magic she hated as the fact that magical folk were excluding her from it. There _might_ have been a reconciliation in the works, but Lily's death prevented it."

We have a moment of silence for the dead, during which a tray of tea and biscuits pops into existence on the table.

"Thank you, Winky," I say to the empty air. To Black, "So, what brings you here today? I know you've been out of jail nearly three months at this point. I'm guessing some of the time since then has been spent in hospital?"

"Some. Most of it, actually. The rest was various administrative details. My grandfather, well, he -" Black stops. Stares at me. "I'm sure you don't want to hear about the family settlements."

"Unless you want me to take a professional interest, no," I tell him, conveying as best I can with a smile that I'm entirely not serious about that, "While I _was_ a lawyer, estate management and planning was never an area I practised in, although I passed the same exams as the chaps who did."

He nods along with that. I get the distinct sense that he has come here with some kind of agenda and is having trouble with getting past 'opening remarks'. There's a bit of an uncomfortable pause.

We fill it with the mundane business of pouring tea and serving ourselves biscuits. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get Black talking, since he's a lot less damaged than I was expecting. Clearly, St. Mungo's does good work. Moody hasn't shared much other than that he 'set Black straight' about Harry's situation here, saying Dumbledore had already had his pennyworth with Black. Unfortunately Moody had to fit his call to me in around a busy period at work, not able to chat at length, so I have almost nothing to go on.

"So," Black says once he's got his tea, with two sugars in it like an utter heathen but at least he doesn't put the milk in first, "I'm not supposed to be here."

"Oh?" I'm quite glad that the Potter genes include sufficiently expressive eyebrows that I am able to give him 'intrigued' and 'encouragement to continue.' At some point I'm going to get some zero-prescription spectacles for staring at people over the top of, and I shall be able to have conversations without feeling like I have a speech impediment.

"Moody tells me you've, ah, met Professor Dumbledore?"

"I have," I aver. "He came with the intent of investigating Harry's finances, but it turned into what amounted to muggle-baiting. Certain words were exchanged between us. Also, between him and the muggle in question, certain punches."

Black chuckles, "Moody was keen to make sure I knew about that bit. He's in a bit of a snit with the Professor."

"He say why? Or, rather, was he specific? I know a few of the possible reasons, of course."

"I like to think I've known Moody long enough to say it's probably all of them. Which ones were you thinking of?" Black gives me an engaging smile. I think he's trying for disarming and encouraging and if I was a teenage girl it might work. At a guess, he's looking to cross-check the things Moody and Dumbledore have been telling him.

"Purely from Moody's point of view? I'd start with him trying to get Moody to do his investigative leg-work for him with only half the story, all of the complete _fuckery_ that impacted the welfare of a couple of children that Moody then discovered, most of which is Dumbledore's fault, and then he discovers that Dumbledore is working to correct a miscarriage of justice without consulting his oldest friend in Magical Law Enforcement? There's probably more, of course. He's certainly had some pithy things to say on the subject of you not getting a trial, and at the very least Dumbledore dropped _that_ particular ball. He was directly involved in the trials, he ought to have at least asked the question when you didn't get one. Administration of justice is a subject on which Moody has capital-v Views."

"Huh." Black sits back and takes a sip of his tea. "You know, I didn't think about that. Was he? Dumbledore, I mean?"

"Involved? Certainly. At least closely enough to get one of his agents off with all charges dropped." I'm not sure how sensitive a subject Snape is with Black at this point. Moody's not shy about calling the man Dumbledore's 'pet Death Eater,' and I'm pretty sure I remember that Crouch announced it in open court so it's not like I'm giving away a state secret.

Black's eyes do, however, narrow when I tell him Dumbledore got someone off, in contrast to the concern his own welfare elicited from the man. That's all I need, for the time being. The esteem in which Dumbledore is held does actually count for something in magical Britain. It wouldn't do to destroy that, nor undermine him too much, not when it will be useful later. What I _do_ want to do is keep all of his problematic decisions, errors, and omissions in the forefront of as many minds as I can manage. In theory it'll promote critical thinking; there are far too many people treating Dumbledore like the leader of his own personal cult. Giving the old git a very real sense that he's not just above the law, but above all norms of civilised behaviour.

Black shakes his head. "Not important right now. He _did_ tell me that Harry was safe and that the people he was with wanted no contact with the wizarding world. Moody told me that was a lie, and from, ah, Petunia's performance at the front door there, you're at least ready for it."

I shrug. "Dumbledore _ordered_ no contact with the wizarding world. Put spells on the house to help that along, but he didn't ask if anyone was willing to accept his authority. And, worse, didn't check that everyone living here was in a fit mental state to accept the spells he cast without reacting badly."

Black winces. "Not exactly an expert, but compulsion and confundment and similar spells can have screwy effects."

"_Especially_ on the mentally ill. The mind is a complicated and sensitive thing," I keep the scoffing about Vernon's mind being in any way either complicated _or _sensitive firmly on the _inside,_ "and even small causes can generate large effects. The parable of the bird turd on the mountainside comes to mind. One little dollop of shit triggers an avalanche, next thing you know everyone in the valley below is dead."

"That bad?" Black raises an eyebrow.

"Close to it. The suicide was, fortunately, on the instalment plan and there was a counter to the worst of the insanity that Dumbledore didn't know about. Lily Potter was a very smart young lady."

"Sounds weird to hear you call her that. From the look of you, she's old enough to be your mother."

"Fifty, remember? If the way I look is making you uncomfortable, I've got ageing potion. I generally go for mid-twenties or thereabouts, which is still a long way off how old I actually _am_, but at least you aren't trying to have a conversation with someone who looks like a kid."

That earns me a head-tilt from Black. After a pause, he waves the offer off. "I think I better get used to it. And, you know, I'm a wizard. I _ought_ to be able to handle weirdness."

I choke down the licking-your-own-balls joke. Strictly speaking I don't know he's an animagus. "Anyway, Dumbledore thinks this house is protected by Lily's self-sacrifice. It isn't. Harry is, and I suspect his father had a part to play in it as well, but the house itself was protected from _before_ the night the Potters were murdered." I've got a bit of a prepared spiel on the Defensor Patriae by now, informed considerably by Dr. Hartlib's helpful responses to the letter I sent, and I rattle it off for Black.

"So as long as Harry satisfies the conditions of Dumbledore's linking spell, he's got the benefit of not just Lily's protection, but the _entire magical defense of the realm?_" Black is goggling. His teachers remembered him in the books as smart, and he's picking through the implications gratifyingly quickly.

"Oh indeed he does, and anyone who comes against him will find his effectiveness degraded, his decision-making impaired, and suffering bad luck at the worst possible times in the worst possible ways." Between Lily's genius and Dumbledore's blundering, little Harry has actual _plot armour_. "Which is why it's important to keep Harry here, happy, and firmly linked to that defence. And the defence uncompromised, which means that unless you've got some deep well of patriotic feeling toward the United Kingdom of Great Britain Possibly Including Northern Ireland, you can't spend too long here. It doesn't like defending what it sees as foreigners."

"Huh. And you say Lily basically _tricked_ this magic into action over this house?"

I rock a hand. "She was an ex brownie-guide. The indoctrination is _strong_ with them, certainly in the better packs. So, while she wasn't the only person with authority over the magic, she was certainly the only one who knew to use it. So, you know, not really a trick, more like 'all the officers were dead and command fell to the senior lance-corporal.' And I'm not sure that you _can_ trick something that old and powerful, it's a magic that has been informed by the best and worst of the nation's defenders for over a millennium. If it wasn't going to be important _now_ I doubt she could have commanded it _then_. Time and causality get decidedly _odd_ when magic's involved, hence divination and allied trades. Did she foresee that this would become an important redoubt for the defence against the enemy? Could have done, it's not like the future is inaccessible to a determined enough use of divination. I could see the magic reaching back in time to maybe help things along, there're signs in history of it having done the like before. Some of the military blunders this country has faced from its would-be invaders have had surprisingly deep roots." Looking at _you_, Medina Sidonia. And given how it helped the later defence of Britain, I shouldn't be surprised if it helped the Fall of France along in '40. It happened much the same way in this universe as it did my native one, and required a _startling_ number of utter muppets to be well entrenched in senior positions in Britain, France and Belgium alike.

Black gives an amused 'huh'. "So it's like playing billiards with a time turner? You can carom off a ball that was there twenty minutes ago?"

"Not a bad analogy. I know it has been affecting me and everything I've been doing for Harry." It actually takes effort to get those words out. Moody's observation that he noticed the effect of the magic on _his_ decision-making - I've no idea how, and I don't have a good plan for asking him for lessons beyond 'fling myself at his feet and beg' - caused me to pay _much_ closer attention to my own thought processes than I had been doing. There is a definite difference between how I think as a disembodied spirit and how I think when I'm sat here in the flesh _unless I firmly resolve to think otherwise_. It requires a mindset of 'I know better here on the ground than someone distantly removed from the action' and every single trick of overcoming executive dysfunction I ever learned in therapy, and I still ain't sure I'm thinking my own thoughts. I've noticed a reluctance to move properly into the house I bought, too. The defence on this house thinks of me as an asset and wants to keep me.

Black's looking a little perturbed at that admission, and at a guess my difficulty in saying it aloud has shown on my face. "Should I be worried?"

"You? No," I tell him, "It doesn't think of you as a possible asset or enemy. You'd probably compromise the defence if you moved in, as I say, but that's about the limit of how much you can interact with it as a pureblood wizard and Harry's godfather. Me, I'm trying to weigh the merits of going along with what a thoroughly pre-modern magic thinks is the best for Harry or moving out and gaining some freedom of action to fight according to more up-to-date standards." Saying _that _costs me a horrible sense of wrongness and guilt such as I haven't experienced since before I died. This thing knows where my buttons are and has no merely human compunctions about pressing them. On the positive side, it isn't up to speed on early-twenty-first-century mental health care and how it arms the afflicted to deal with intrusive thoughts and feelings. Which may be a clue as to how Moody copes: he's lived a lifetime of trauma and is still functional.

"Well if you're helping Harry shouldn't you stay?" Black asks in all innocent helpfulness.

"Yeah, don't help it along," I snap back, "Look, sorry about the tone, but actually trying to talk about this out loud is a bit of a strain. And I'm not talking about _leaving_, just moving to the next street over. From where I can be just as much help to Harry - and, have to admit, Dudley, who has grown on me rather - as I am while in residence. The _point_ is that I need freedom of thought and action to be a more effective help to Harry, and, in the wider context, fighter in the coming war." The intrusive shame and guilt eases somewhat. _What if I'm only pushing against it for my own ego's sake, and this is a bad idea?_ Yeah, intrusive thought. _Or is it?_

"Are - are you all right?" Black asks, snapping me out of the spiral of rumination.

"Sorry," I say, pinching the bridge of my nose against the coming headache, "subtle mind-affecting magic that you can just _barely_ distinguish from your own emotional scars. Total bastard to cope with. Dumbledore stuck a few standard secrecy spells on top and turned the whole thing into an utter devil's brew of mindfuckery. Not much of a problem if you just go along with it, but fighting it's a complete _sod_."

"I can imagine," he says, "My family tried something similar with me. Trying to 'cure me of youthful rebellion' or some such rot."

"And you're still willing to talk to your Grandfather?"

He shrugs. "He's not the only family I've got, but if I convince him that the arse-kissing is sincere, then I get all the family entails and I can do right by the _decent_ relatives I have."

_Oh dear me, Sirius, you and my old self are more alike than just in looks_. "Know how that one goes. By rights I should have been a _lot_ more on the outs with my old family than I was, but they keep hold of you by the regard you still have for the decent ones."

He gives me a funny look at that. Hopefully the point of rapport still scored. "You're letting them think you're still dead?"

"I am. It's not as heartless a decision as it might appear, but the reasons why that happens to be the case I'm keeping private. I've got found family now, and my kids are honestly better off believing me dead and with no clues to lead anyone back from me to them."

Black nods along. "I shan't pry. Look, I came to talk about Harry. Moody told me you were very protective of him, and openly willing to be ruthless about it. That right?"

"It'll do for the in-a-nutshell version, yes."

He sits back and takes a long, considering drink of his tea. "You know I _could_ go before the Wizengamot and seek custody."

"You could, certainly. There are some very compelling reasons why you shouldn't, though. Which, unlike Dumbledore, I've given you some of. Want the rest?"

He extends a hand, palm up in the time-honoured 'go on' gesture.

"Harry had a bloody rough go of it, the first three and a half years he was here. Until I showed up, the Dursleys' own problems, compounded by the frankly _idiotic_ spell-work Dumbledore put on the house, made them treat both the kids they had charge of terribly. It's taken me a year of some frankly shady behaviour to get them to where they're a functional family in their own right, and a decent foster-family for Harry. I mention this as context for the important thing for _both_ the children - with a third on the way, as it happens - in this house. What they need, after the big changes I brought about, is an extended period of stability. The aim of the parenting game is to make yourself redundant by giving the kids a safe place to learn and grow, and that means a predictable environment. A big upheaval in Harry's life, right now? I've got to say, it'd not be good for him."

"The other kid's a muggle?"

"Just like his father. Although I don't like the word 'muggle' very much."

"What do you call them?"

"_People_."

That gets his back up a bit. He gives me a hard stare. I can see his mouth tightening up like he's damming up a torrent of outrage.

"Don't look at me like that. Your family might have been extremists, but giving them a different name like they're some kind of alien species? That's where it _starts_. Get your mind right on _that_ point and you're a step further away from the horseshit they tried to make you believe growing up."

He's still not happy about it. The temper's looking less likely to burst its banks, but still. I've clearly prodded a tender spot.

I press on. "Thing is, shitty attitudes like racism, or the blood purity nonsense, they're _insidious_. If you're raised with them, it's all too easy to take that first step away from what they drummed into you as a kid and think 'Job Done'. And the smugness blinds you to the fact that it's still there, colouring everything you think and do and while you're maybe not part of the problem any more, you're not yet part of the solution. I'm speaking from personal experience on this one. It took _years_ to get all the bullshit out of my thinking and if I was to put my hand on my heart, I can't swear it's all gone quite yet. So, yes, when you're taking decisions about the kids in this house, you have to consider _all_ the kids. Without sorting them into the boxes your parents would have put them in."

He looks a bit nauseous at that last. "That's … not a bad point, actually."

"Well, I put a lot of hard work in to getting this family straightened out, which I don't want to see wasted, so I'm not entirely altruistic about this. But yes, if you uproot Harry now, you're not just hurting him, but his foster-brother into the bargain. Thing is, there's a lot of involvement in Harry's life you can have that _isn't_ full-on adoption."

"Such as?"

"Like what I'm doing. Fun uncle who takes the boys out at weekends. Source of all kinds of extra educational outings and activities. You know, godfather stuff. And if you want to be on hand to look after Harry's welfare and safety, well, I've got a house right here in the neighbourhood. Move in, scandalise the neighbours a bit."

"Eh?" The last bit seems to have shocked him. It was meant to.

"Well, two grown men, no women in evidence," I grin at him, "They'll be tying themselves in knots trying to figure out which of us is -"

"OI!" He looks affronted at the very idea, which tells me something about magical culture that I couldn't have just straight-up asked _anyone_. Clearly Dumbledore has spent a century in the closet for a _reason_.

"I'm joking, I'm joking. I'll be mostly appearing as a kid, we'll figure out a story about you to leak to the neighbours via Petunia. See what the dating scene's like for an ex-con and we'll figure out what to tell your girlfriend if it gets to the point of you moving her in."

"Very muggle attitude, assuming I'll be moving a girlfriend in," he says, with a sly tone, "I was always _told_ the muggles just rutted like beasts without benefit of marriage."

"Hey, don't knock it until you've tried it. I think you have to go back three generations in my family before you find _anyone_ who was born in wedlock. We all got married _eventually_, like, but in my case my daughter was old enough to be her mother's bridesmaid."

"I suppose I should be ready for things like this. I mean, I knew muggleborns at Hogwarts, but I suppose I wasn't seeing them where they lived, was I?"

"I'd tell you my family wasn't normal, but that's not really helpful. 'Normal' is one of those insidious myths that gets bandied about to make people feel bad about how they choose to live their lives even though they're not hurting anyone. 'Normal' can go shit in its hat for all I care. You get more of it in the magical community because it's so very, very _small_. A village where everyone's got their nose in everyone else's business."

He nods. "That's about right, yes. I ran away from home when I was, oh, going on sixteen, after that ham-fisted attempt at controlling me. I swear my mother was more concerned about what the rest of magical society would think."

"And horrified at the thought you'd talk to outsiders about what went on at home?"

"It's like you were there." A sudden worried look. "You weren't, were you? I mean, you're sort of a spirit and able to step outside time?"

I can't help but laugh. "No. Personal experience, remember? There might be that lit'ry line about unhappy families all being unhappy in their own way, but there are some _remarkably_ common elements. When it comes to the past, though, I've seen remarkably little outside the moment Harry became an orphan."

He sits bolt upright, he clearly Has Questions.

I hold up a hand to stop him. "It's difficult to tell you anything meaningful you won't get from someone who examined the scene. Things are very different on the spirit side of things, hard to put into words. They died well, and bravely, and made their deaths mean something for Harry's survival. And for his welfare, if Dumbledore hadn't meddled. Or meddled too little, rather. I dare say the Dursleys might have coped a lot better if he'd actually managed the situation as he ought to have."

He deflates a bit. "I loved them, you know. I was hoping they might have had some … I don't know, message?"

I catch myself on a moment. It would be so very, very easy to tell him a pretty lie. Wouldn't do any harm. Thing is, I'm exercising a _lot_ more self control and self-examination than I usually do, what with trying to keep the magical defences out of my brain, and while there's something to be said _tactically_ for building a further point of rapport that way, _ethically_ I should be more careful. "Not as such, no," I tell him. "I interacted with Lily briefly, she was at the centre of the magic she was working and so I was drawn there specifically. But there's a bit of James's legacy that lives on, I've seen myself reading it in several possible futures. And there's a quote from it that I think might reassure you about where I think the limits are in looking out for Harry and building a decent world for him to grow up in."

"Oh?"

"_I solemnly swear I am up to no good."_

With that, I have my man. Oh, he's rough around the edges. Not just from Azkaban, either. Raised by racists in an abusive home? That leaves _marks,_ as I can personally attest. He's impulsive, troubled, has a deal of growing up to do in some ways and is aged beyond his years in others. But, above all, wants to see the world that hurt him _change_ and for Harry to have a long and happy life. Yeah, we're going to get on _just fine_, and spend the next couple of hours making plans. I'll tell Harry and Dudley he's coming, and we'll have a big introduction with party food and fun activities at the coming weekend. And - best part - he agrees to be my spotter for getting my wand-work and apparation squared away.

_Mischief Managed._

* * *

NOTES:

Dudley turning out to have an aptitude for maths and science despite a reading difficulty? Just like a chap I went to school with. Spent a lot of time in the slow kid class until they figured out he was dyslexic - this was in the days when assessments weren't routine, and the assistive stuff was in its infancy - and ended up, when last I heard, doing R&D in pharmaceuticals.

Robert Boyle you _should_ have at least heard about in school when they taught you about Boyle's Law. In our history, one of the last alchemists, and probably the first chemist in the modern sense.

Manor Lordships are a real thing: 'Manor' didn't originally mean 'big house' as the modern usage has it, they were tracts of land capable of being economically self-supporting, granted in return for feudal services, usually but not always of a military character. (The Manor _House_ was the residence of the landowner, though not every manor had such a dwelling and it usually isn't called Something Manor.) As the law developed from 1066 onward, the 'dignity' of the lordship was held to be separate from the land that gave rise to it and could be sold separately at least from the 1925 reforms onward. (The change was entirely accidental, arising from a fluke in the wording of the Act that created the modern Land Registry) A small number still survive (and there are firms that will research and resurrect defunct ones, using legal doctrines that I'm not personally sure hold water) and can be bought. I've gone with Hangleton purely for economy's sake: don't want to add a new location.

As for why? Apart from the Statute of Secrecy loophole - which I wholly invented, but it's the kind of thing that happened all the time in old legislation - I understand you have to have Lordships in Harry Potter fanfiction, even though it's directly stated in the books that there are no titles of nobility in the wizarding world. So I had Mal buy one.

Bottom Laithe and Lingy Pits are real places, just nowhere near where I've situated Hangleton. (Gisburn Forest and at the foot of Fiendsdale, both places I've been hiking in the last few weeks.) You want picturesque place names? We got 'em.

Football formations: 4-4-2 is your classic four defenders, four midfielders, two forwards formation. The swirling mob of small boy football has everyone trying to get goals with a few kids hanging back out of sheer common sense, hence 2-2-6.

Vernon and Mal are quoting from Kipling's "The Islanders" although I suspect Vernon would be outraged if someone explained what it was actually _about_.

Blackpool Pier - there are actually three piers, and I spent a lot of time on them as a kid, the grandparents I got sent to stay with a lot lived there - isn't _quite_ a death sentence if you're chucked off it, but those waters drown two or three people a year (usually drunks: Blackpool in season is kind of a party town, for 'puking drunk' values of 'party') just by accident.

The story about the Italian security guard is just as it was told to me, and confirmed by my sister-in-law. I'm told he even had the same haircut and beard. I've done it this way mostly as a crack at how vague most descriptions of people actually are, in stories and witness statements alike. (It's for this reason that Identification Evidence is one of the more vexed bits of the Law of Evidence).

Mal's mental health problems are patterned after, but not identical, to my own. Please, if you recognise anything of your own life in what is depicted here and you aren't getting help, seriously consider it. The chances of it improving matters for you are honestly quite good, these days.

Sirius accidentally quotes one of the funnier bits from _The League of Gentlemen_. A personal favourite of mine, not just because I was - like the writers - brought up in the north of England not far from the real town it's based on.

Finally, from the disclaimer: Harry, Neville, Snape, Sirius, Dudley for certain. Quite possibly Draco and Hermione into the bargain: posturing bullies and pushy over-achievers seldom come from _happy_ homes. Luna comes off as probably neglected (well meaning, but Xeno doesn't strike one as the most _present_ of parents). Much has been said about Molly Weasley's parenting - the kind of woman who's great with kids other than her own. And we're expected to believe Ariana Dumbledore went Obscurial from one single incident when she was raised by a man whose reaction to that incident was torture and murder of all involved? Okay, the last one is giving Rita Skeeter's reporting more credence (geddit?) than it deserves, but still. That's a _lot_ of abusive homes in the magical world.

Fanfic recommendation: Sympathetic Properties by Mr Norrell, only on FFN as far as I know, which dives _deep_ into a very entertaining imagining of the interactions between wizards, goblins and alchemists arising from one very small, simple change in Harry's response to the Dobby incident. And has the most entertainingly lunatical Dumbledore I've yet seen in fanfiction.


	18. Dulce et Decorum Est

DISCLAIMER: Does Harry's alleged isolation from the Wizarding World not extend to random wizards not recognising him before he gets his Hogwarts letter? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

With apologies for missing last week's update: as you may gather from reading this chapter it was rather a hard one to write and the weeks of buffer time I had built up to compensate for the difficulty got eaten up by matters that came rather ahead of hobbies in my personal priority queue. Good news: Chapter 19 is already half written.

* * *

CHAPTER 18

"_I solemnly swear I am up to no good."_

_With that, I have my man. Oh, he's rough around the edges. Not just from Azkaban, either. Raised by racists in an abusive home? That leaves marks, as I can personally attest. He's impulsive, troubled, has a deal of growing up to do in some ways and is aged beyond his years in others. But, above all, wants to see the world that hurt him change and for Harry to have a long and happy life. Yeah, we're going to get on just fine, and spend the next couple of hours making plans. I'll tell Harry and Dudley he's coming, and we'll have a big introduction with party food and fun activities at the coming weekend. And - best part - he agrees to be my spotter for getting my wand-work and apparation squared away._

_Mischief Managed._

-oOo-

It's the day before New Year's Eve, 1986.

It was a thing that had to come: Harry said he wanted to see where his mum and dad were buried. I brought Petunia and the boys - Vernon drew the short straw at work and has to be in the office today, about which I suspect he's a bit relieved, not being a man of his emotions - in the car. With Sirius' help, there are now back seats in what used to be a two-seater and they are considerably roomier than they look from the outside. Sirius himself rode his shiny new motorcycle - his old one needs some serious work, Hagrid having kept it in one of Hogwarts' barns - which from the looks of it is a Z1000 under all the customisation the previous owner did.

(Vernon was decidedly grumpy about our refusal to juice up his company BMW the way my car and Sirius's bike have been. "Get your own car, owned free and clear," I told him, "and we'll do everything magical law allows to it, within the limits of what you can work without magic." He started saving that day.)

It's a three-and-a-bit hour drive from Little Whinging to Godric's Hollow, even with the magical assists. Reliability, extra power, better roadholding and invisibility to the police take us down the M4 and M5 at 95 for most of the way, the seasonal lack of traffic being a big help. We're a way off reverse-engineering the high-speed enchantments on the Knight Bus just yet, which is a pity as they would turn this into a very short trip indeed. And, unlike the Knight Bus, my car has _seatbelts_.

We park up outside St. Jerome's church; we're in the time before double yellow lines and pay-and-display machines absolutely everywhere, so it's gratifyingly easy to find a space. Godric's Hollow is a tiny place, the sort that consists of a village green, two pubs, a teashop, a Spar, the church, and a few dozen houses, maybe as many as a hundred. It probably has to take in a handful of surrounding hamlets to amount to a thousand inhabitants if there's even that many.

Of course, there'll be some dwellings we can't readily see, wizarding homes being what they are. It's a tidy little place, the sort that makes what it can off tourists for Exmoor. The sort that doesn't _need_ to put 'Walkers and Dogs Welcome' signs outside the pub because it's taken as read.

Sirius and I between us decided that Harry didn't need to see the house at his age, not with what the Ministry did, and we don't mention it to him as even a possibility to see. The war memorial, however, is the first image of his parents Harry can remember seeing and he's enraptured by it. For my own part I sort of feel I _ought_ to take umbrage over wizards co-opting the memorial to the dozen or so Godric's Hollow lads who gave all for King and Country, but it's not like James and Lily didn't do the same in their own way.

"It's a good likeness," Petunia remarks, while Sirius is applying a charm to let Dudley see the statue of his aunt and uncle. And foster-brother, which is probably weirding him out a little.

And, just as Petunia says, it _is_ a good likeness measured against memories of the couple I've seen in Petunia and Vernon's heads. Regrettably, they've been posed with that hopeful-gaze-into-the-future attitude that you get on old Soviet monuments. I understand the reason for it, memorials are for the living, but showing them at bay and defiant would have been truer to the actual events of the night.

Harry's bearing up well. He is, I think, a bit young to really drag every last scrap of meaning out of a piece of art so there's a limit to how much it can affect him. "Did I really look like that then?" he asks after Sirius lifts him up to get a close look at how the sculptor represented him in his mother's arms.

"Probably," I tell him, "although pretty much all babies look like that. People don't really start looking like themselves until they're a couple of years old."

"And my mum and dad?" He's trying to drink in every last detail the sculptor captured, storing it.

"It's quite close," Sirius tells him, "I'll see if I can find photographs of them for you. If I can't find where all the stuff in my old flat went, I'll write to people who knew them and ask for copies of the pictures they had."

That earns Sirius a hug, while I speculate on how I'd track down their wedding photo album, if it still exists. There can't be that many magical photographers, maybe the one they hired still has the negatives?

The churchyard of St. Jerome's looks like an unexceptional country churchyard, until you get in and with magical eyes see that it's bigger on the inside. I'm not here for my usual nosy at the headstones, nor to acquaint myself with the local grim. I think they're called either yeth-hounds or wisht-hounds hereabouts, either way she's barely distinct in the winter sunlight, nosing around the churchyard wall. We're looking for a grave a few years old in one of the magical parts. Which we can find by asking Dudley which bits he can see and which he can't: I have to pick him up and carry him over the boundary of the magic.

In the magical section - by far the largest part of the churchyard, the gravestones sing softly with the magic that preserves them - the headstones read like a Who's Who of the last eight centuries of magical Britain. If I wanted a factually correct _Nature's Nobility_ it'd be places like this I'd start with. Choking down the history buff in me, I help with the search for the Potter plot.

It's Petunia and Sirius who find it first. Harry, for his part, stops dead some twenty feet short of the grave, along the row of headstones from where his mum and dad lie. Sirius and Petunia are right in front of it, fallen silent after calling out their discovery. Harry and Dudley had stayed with me. In the charged atmosphere, Petunia and Sirius are visibly upset and I've got a lot more practise than either in holding it together for the sake of the kids' nerves.

I take a knee between the two boys. "Now, lads, I've explained what this place is for, right?" Petunia - who remembered her Sunday School - had been surprisingly helpful. "It's all about giving the living a place to remember the dead, and to say the things we wish we could say to them."

"Can they hear?" Harry asks.

"Like you're leaving a message for them," I tell him, "you're not having a conversation like on the phone. And even if they never get the message, it will make you feel better to say the words, or even just to have come here to know you _could_ say something even if you just spend some time here in silence."

"Can you hear from _your_ children?" Harry asks, knocking the emotional wind right out of me.

I have to stop and swallow hard to make sure my voice is under control. _Think fast, "Mal"._ "Not right now, Harry. Remember, I came back from what's on the other side of being dead, so it's different for me. I reckon when I go back, when it's my time all over again, I'll be able to pick up all those messages." I fuckin' _better_. Because if I can't, I want a _word_ with whoever designed this multiverse.

Harry and Dudley alike squeeze the hands they're holding. I gather that they've been talking about how me being dead and not able to see my kids any more is Really Sad.

"I -" Harry has something he can't say. I squeeze his hand back in encouragement. "I -" he stammers out again.

"Take your time, Harry," I say, "some things _are_ hard to say."

"I'm scared," he gets out after a few moments of quiet.

"It's scary, so no wonder," I tell him. "Take your time, you'll find your bravery." It won't do to tell him that if he doesn't find it today it'll be harder next time. The last thing we want to do is make him feel like this is some sort of _obligation_.

Dudley's less affected. Some of that's him just being overall less sensitive like his father, but mostly it's because to him Aunt Lily and Uncle James are much more abstract than they are for Harry, who had several years of very, very good cause to miss them. Dudley has, however, come to care about his foster brother, and he steps in for a big, drowning hug. No words, because Dudley doesn't much do words. Dudley _understands_ hugs, though, on approximately the same level that he understands punching, goal-keeping and basic mathematics: things that he _gets_ without having to think about them too hard.

"Thanks, Dud," Harry whispers. He's looking at me over his foster-brother's shoulder.

"Well done, Dudley," I murmur. Louder, "Harry, take your time. This is your first time here, and it's hard to face up to. Which is why we all came to help, yes?"

Harry nods, wide eyed. There's a shimmer of tears, and a crease between his brows as he musters all of his little-kid resolve. _That's the lad. _He squares up his shoulders, disengages from Dudley's hug and grabs his foster-brother's hand to drag him along the row of graves.

_Not_, I notice, bringing me along. If I wanted a sign that I was doing the right thing by intervening in the Dursley family, I just got it. Harry's looking to Dudley for immediate support, and getting it. No questions asked. Even if I go under the proverbial bus tomorrow, Harry's in _much_ better shape for the future he has. Sirius, who's standing by his best mate's grave with a - presumably - conjured wreath takes Harry's hand as the little fella reaches him. I recognise laurel, willow and palm fronds in Sirius's wreath, and the whole is picked out in lilies. Victorian floriography, funereal subtext: I sort of know a bit of it, but not enough to say anything with it. Fortunately, there's a modern version, and while Harry is stopped, silent at his parents' graveside, I take a moment to conjure. The spell for conjuring flowers isn't terribly tightly defined, as they're highly variable things. It requires a four-beat incantation with a stressed third syllable, preferably related to the flowers you want to conjure, a lot of visualisation, and some firm and forthright wand-movement if you want anything other than a simple spray bouquet. "_Papaverae," _I incant, rolling my wrist in a wand-swirl to shape the magic into the circle of a wreath as I picture the wreath I want with near migraine-inducing intensity. My first few tries at this - because of _course_ I anticipated needing this spell and practised beforehand - I got Remembrance Day paper poppies due to losing focus. There _are_ charms that will basically handle all of the detail work in routine conjurations and require much less visualisation, but you get what the charm gives you rather than what you specifically want. And, frankly, I've been learning that I might as well resign myself to sucking at charms. To Sirius's massive amusement.

I lean down to hand Harry the wreath of poppies that I have conjured out of everything and nothing. "Lay this, while you think about what to say," I tell him, "and Sirius has something to leave, too. When you're ready, you can either say something or talk to us, just as you prefer."

Harry puts down the wreath, while Sirius bends down to lay his, put a hand on his shoulder and murmur something in the little lad's ear.

He steps away to where I'm waiting, next to Petunia, who's dabbing at her eyes with an embroidered hanky.

"Poppies?" he asks me, "is that a non-magical thing?"

I nod. "For the fallen of war. Been that way since the First World War."

"In Flanders fields the poppies grow," Petunia quotes, and falls silent again, choking a little on the last word. I get why, I'm kind of not sure of my own voice right now.

Sirius has tears running down his face, but his voice is steady. "I used to wonder what that was about, when I went out in the non-magic world. Everyone wearing a poppy buttonhole. In the autumn, yes?"

"Every November, yes. They're sold to support old and serving soldiers, there's a charity that has been managing it since about 1920 or so, after the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the war that had just finished." I shake my head. The history of the Royal British Legion just plain doesn't matter right now. Although one of the old standards from Poppy Appeal adverts comes strongly to mind. "They do not grow old, as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. I'm probably mis-quoting that, but it's from the same poem Petunia quoted. I think."

"It isn't," Petunia says, and recites the whole of _In Flanders Fields_. And then the whole of _For The Fallen_ \- not just the often-quoted verse I happen to know - for good measure.

"Thank you," I tell her, meaning it. "It seems apt that we should remember to 'take up their quarrel with the foe'." I'm not about to quote from the considerably more cynical poetry of that era that is my own personal preference. While the lions-led-by-donkeys motif is as apt for James and Lily as it was for the likes of the Pals' Battalions, now is _not_ the time.

All unnoticed, Harry and Dudley have come over. While I'm thanking Petunia for her little recital, Harry gives her a little kid's round-the-legs hug. He's crying, and _mirabile dictu!_ Petunia takes a knee to hug him back. She's never quite been appropriately warm to him - guilt, maybe? - and I'd been expecting that any comfort Harry needed today he was going to have to get from Sirius and me.

Sirius and I exchange a _look_. I've filled him in, in full, on how things were and what I've learned of the reason why. I had to persuade him at considerable length that my way of doing things was both better for the boys and a far crueller revenge in the long run than any amount of magical nastiness. The woman Petunia is being _now_ is going to look back on how she once treated the child currently soaking her blouse with tears and snot and _cringe_. And wouldn't you know it, congratulating her on her improvement is going to be _just_ the reminder she needs. I make a mental note.

I can tell Harry and Petunia are going to be a while: there's probably at least ten minutes of hugging and crying it out to be done if I'm any judge. I step away to where Sirius is demonstrating his youthful-male Discomfort With Emotions. As I do, I notice that we have company in the churchyard.

"Over your right shoulder, Sirius. About sixty, seventy yards and closing. Cove in a top hat and a purple frock coat. Anyone you recognise?"

I nonchalantly turn away while Sirius uses the corner of his eye to take in the newcomer. That it's a wizard isn't in doubt: a top hat on a Tuesday, before noon, in Devon? That said, I rather like the frock coat. I'm tempted to ask who his tailor is if he comes over.

"Daedalus Diggle," Sirius says. He's high-society raised so he isn't gauche enough to make eye contact that might invite the newcomer to join us. "Part of our old crowd during the war, basically decent but a bit of a prat."

"Know the sort well, not unique to magicals," as indeed they're not. "Had one for a brother-in-law, once upon a time."

Sirius snorts his amusement. "Is he coming this way?"

"He surely is," I say, having used the corner of my own eye to get an update. "General curiosity, spotted us in particular, or just here to pay his respects, do you think?"

"Can't really say, although paying respects I have my doubts about. We were all of us in Dumbledore's mob, but _very_ different social circles. James and Lily's passing wasn't, I suspect, personal for him the way it was for some of us. And he's rather the sort to be a gawker, sorry to say. The social graces of an excitable puppy, as I remember."

I _hmm_ at that, and wait for Diggle to get closer. He's definitely coming this way, and my social-awkwardness-inbound warning light is flashing most urgently. The wizarding public really can't be trusted around the boy-who-lived, and this has all the hallmarks of the kind of jackass who's going to treat Harry as public property. With an emotionally wrought little boy in the picture I _really_ don't want a scene. Or, at least, not _that_ scene, I suspect I'm going to make at least something of a show of myself whatever happens because I can _feel_ my blood pressure coming up to steam. "Going to head this off," I tell Sirius, and take a few smart strides toward the wizard as he approaches.

"Can we help you?" I ask, hands clasped behind me and my tone of voice pitched firmly in my best I'd-really-rather-you-fucked-off register.

"Ah! Daedalus Diggle, at your service," he says, extending a hand.

I don't take said hand. Don't want him thinking he's welcome, not when he's quite blatantly intruding. "Rather not what I was asking," I tell him, "I'm more concerned with maintaining family privacy in a moment of grief."

His eyes widen a moment. I'm grateful for the moment of self-awareness that seems to have punctured his urge to celebrity-worship. "Oh! I do apologise. Can that _really_ be the boy who lived?"

"No such person," I snap back. "He's a little boy who lost his mummy and daddy, visiting their grave for the first time."

Diggle goes pale. I _hope_ it's because he realises just what an arse he was about to make of himself. "I'm sorry - I -" he trails off. Yeah, he realised what I meant. It _could_ have been that he took me to mean that it wasn't Harry crying by that grave, which I realised as I was saying it. Fortunately he looks like he's grasped that all of the hero-worship bullshit is actually about a real flesh-and-blood person who he'd been on the verge of upsetting.

Sirius steps up next to me. "What my irritable friend means to say, Diggle old chap, is that we want no part of the nonsense that's being spouted. Calling Harry the boy-who-lived and crediting him with the defeat of the pretender Lord robs James and Lily of the meaning of their sacrifice." Sirius' tone is laying the upper-class scorn on _thick_.

"Indeed," I add, "and if I seem irritable it's because in all the hullaballoo everyone seems to forget that he's a little boy who those vermin robbed of his parents. Please don't let me learn that you've put it about that Harry is visiting his parents' grave. If you make it impossible for him to come here because of crowds of gawkers I am _exactly_ the kind of person who can afford to owl every household in magical Britain with a strongly worded note about what you inflicted on the _boy-who-lived_." I realise as I'm saying it that my temper is not quite as under control as it ought to be.

"I - I - I assure you, I didn't _mean_ \- " Diggle gulps nervously, and I can _feel_ Sirius wincing next to me. The kind of people who'd turn out and drive Harry away from this place are exactly the same people who'd drown Diggle in howlers and curse-mail without being at all aware of the hypocrisy. What I've threatened Diggle with is a course of action that could readily get him seriously injured or even killed. Stochastic terrorism, got to love it.

I make a chopping motion with my hand to cut him off. I reach for my courtroom voice, which is a measure of self-control I'm in dire need of right now. "I shan't take any account of what you _mean_, sir. I will govern my actions according to what you _do._"

Diggle is wringing his hands. "Of course, of course. I ought to have thought, I do apologise."

"Accepted," I snap out. It's not hard to imply to someone, using only posture and expression, that you'd dearly like the thump them insensible.

Sirius puts a hand on my arm, which is more calming than perhaps he intended because I realise that if Mr. Hare-off-after-vengeance thinks I'm being hot-headed I need to dial it back more than I thought. "Daedalus," he says, "you must understand that we're all a little highly strung here. It's a very emotional moment, and my friend saw what he thought was some heartless, thoughtless _gawker_ coming to _intrude_."

There are actual tears brimming in Diggle's eyes. I start to feel a little sorry for him, tempered by the fact that it was his own brash thoughtlessness that put him in this pickle. "I promise, most sincerely, that I shan't speak a word of Harry's presence here today. You're quite right, it wouldn't do to drive the poor little mite away from his own mother's graveside. I am so, so, sorry for my thoughtlessness today, is there anything I can do to make it up?"

Sirius sighs, "Not much, for the time being, Harry is living in a secret location and we're keeping his contact with the magical world to an absolute minimum. For his safety, you understand." Dumbledore's owl-repelling spells are still returning anything addressed to Harry directly to sender. I spot one maybe every month or so.

It occurs to me that there is, however, something that Diggle can help with. "Tell me, Mr. Diggle, do you have a wide social circle? People you share news and, perhaps, gossip with?"

He nods, looking pathetically eager to redeem himself in our eyes.

There's no warmth of humour in the smile I give him. "Then perhaps you can help Harry by spreading a few useful and interesting facts that fill in some of the gaps in the story about the night his parents died? You see, the whole boy-who-lived version of the story is the one his _enemies_ tell. Because they're scum who let themselves be slave-marked by the fraud who led them, and they don't want to admit that the leader of their criminal gang was brought low by one of the very muggleborn they consider so beneath them. When you're talking over the story of that night with your friends, remind them that Harry was all of fifteen months old, a babe in arms. And his last line of defence, the woman who struck down the criminal who sought her child's murder, was Lily Potter. Remember _her_, before you torment the child she sacrificed for with reminders of how he came to be an orphan. Every time you do, you remind the vermin of how utterly _wrong_ they were, and frustrate their efforts to diminish her sacrifice."

Diggle's frantic nodding shakes his hat loose and he has to catch it. I'm _hoping_ that him not uncovering here beside all these graves is just a wizarding custom I'm not _au fait_ with rather than thoughtless disrespect. He stammers out "O-o-o-of course" over and over again.

After a round of reassurances from Diggle and his hasty retreat, I'm about to return to where Harry, Petunia and Dudley are still by the Potters' grave. Sirius stops me with a hand on my elbow. "You might want to watch that temper," he says. Which, coming from him does rather mean something.

"I know, I know. I did actually catch myself on when I realised how heated I was getting. After that I was rather putting on a show. Dumbledore will be getting a full report of this, I shouldn't wonder, and he needs to know we're both willing to go full Papa Wolf for Harry's sake."

Sirius frowns briefly at the reference he doesn't get, although it's clear what I mean from context. He says, "It's more than that, though. You know that trick you do, transfiguring the air to electricity? Conjuring sparks and St. Elmo's Fire?"

"Yes?" While Sirius _has_ been reading through the basic science I've been revising to pass O-levels, he's not quite alongside electrons and charges yet, still less terms like 'coronal discharge'. To his credit, he _can_ pronounce the word 'electricity', putting him ahead of a lot of pureblood wizards.

"Well, I don't know if you noticed, but you were doing it while you were cutting Diggle down."

"Ooops." I can't imagine that looked anything other than intimidating. And, come to think of it, there is a bit of a smell of ozone on the air. I've never done it unconsciously before, but I have been practising that particular trick a _lot_. Charges and ions are easy things to transfigure into existence - it happens purely naturally a _lot_ so there's almost no ontological resistance to the change and not much more to outright conjuration - and being able to gin up electrical charges at need is the sort of thing that is just plain _handy_.

"Thing is, it looks almost exactly like the aura of the most powerful wizards. You know and I know that most corposant is just electricity in the air, but to most wizards? It's the sign of an old and terrifying sorceror, probably a warlock, and definitely a scary bastard for good or ill." Sirius has a mischievous smirk on my face as he tells me this.

"Oh dear," I say, "so I've accidentally stumbled on a way of bluffing the absolute living daylights out of any mage I meet?" It's amusing me, too.

"Long as you don't meet anyone mad enough to call that bluff."

I snort out my amused agreement. Going to have to work on that one. That problem with charms also works out to being a problem with quite a lot of the combat spells in the standard repertoire. Most curses, hexes and jinxes are of the nature of charms, after all. Fighting with Transfiguration is a _lot_ harder, so I'm going to have to work harder than other mages to be any use in a fight. If I can get through that particular skill gate, though, I have the potential to be pretty dangerous. It's a big piece of why Dumbledore is so scary in a fight.

Back at the grave-side, Harry is a lot calmer although he's still got a death-grip on Petunia's hand. I think he might have been still clinging to the orphan's hope that his parents are still alive somewhere, and the grave broke that illusion. When we get back he's talking to the headstone. "... and Mal says I should learn all I can, because being the best wizard I can be is the right thing to do. I hope you can watch me doing it, but I'm going to be brave, and clever, and work hard. I've got Mal, and Sirius, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley and Nana Perenelle helping me. Love you, Mum, Dad."

Now my temper has blown out, I'm touched by the bit Harry's little speech I actually heard. I'll ask Petunia to put the memory in my shiny new pensieve when we get home so I can hear the whole thing. I take a knee and hold the hand that Petunia isn't holding. "With you all the way, Harry. We all are."

He turns to me. "They're really dead, aren't they? Do you think they might come back like you did?"

"Probably not, Harry. I was only dead, not dead and gone. I don't know why it's a rule, but once you're gone you can't come back. Ghosts aren't gone, spirits like me aren't gone, and baddies like Tom aren't gone, but normal people and good people like your mum and dad, when they're gone they're gone. It's sad, but we believe that they still exist on the far side."

Harry nods. He asks for help reading the gravestone, which he needs gratifyingly little of. "Mal? What does that mean? The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death?"

"It's from the bible," Petunia observes.

"But what does it mean?"

I've given this a lot of thought, starting from when I first read that line back when Deathly Hallows came out. Having theology as a minor hobby interest leads you down some _odd_ paths. How to frame it for a kid Harry's age? "It's a comforting thing to say, Harry, but isn't really _true_ in the way I think you're thinking. It's from a bit of the Bible about how the world will end, and how when everything is over, everything will be put in order and there'll be no more sad things like people dying. It's really not about people being brave like your mum and dad were. I think whoever wrote that there just wanted to have a go at Tom the Baddy, to mock him because he wasn't brave enough to die properly. You see, death isn't the enemy of life, any more than the full stop is the enemy of the sentence. Your mum and dad, they chose to end their sentences to make yours better. It's horrible that that was the only choice they had, but they loved you enough to choose it even though it was horrible for them. Sometimes the only choice we have is a rotten one, and those are the times when being brave matters most."

There's a long silence while Harry thinks about that one. As do the grownups. It is, after all, one of those questions on which there is no final answer, not that anyone who actually knows it can communicate with the living. I miss living in a universe where death was a true end, I really do. You could just dismiss questions like this and not worry about them.

"Why, though? Why did they have to?" Harry's tone is plaintive, "Why did _that man come to kill them?"_ His voice turns angry at the end there. As well it should.

"It's a big long story, Harry. Sirius knows the details better than I do, but the gist of it is that while most wizards don't like people who don't have magic, some wizards really _hate_ them. And hate wizards and witches like your mum who have non-magical parents. It's actually pretty stupid, because we're all people at the end of the day, but there are reasons buried in history for it. Of course, they still had to _choose_ to believe stupid stuff from history, but sometimes people don't know better than to choose to be stupid."

Harry's nodding along. "And _that man_ wanted to kill mum for having parents who weren't magical?"

"That was part of it. I reckon he didn't care all that much himself, but he wanted to be powerful and that meant getting people to follow him. So he went for the biggest group of people who were _already_ choosing to be stupid. So that meant sometimes killing people he didn't really care about one way or another just to make his followers think he was as stupid as them."

Sirius snorts his amusement at that line. "It _was_ a choice, too. All of my family believed that rot, but I chose not to."

Harry already likes Sirius - as does Dudley, Sirius is the kind of fun that little boys are naturally drawn to - but there's a new light of admiration in his eyes for his godfather. "And that was why he came to my mum and dad's house? So the stupid people would think he was as stupid as them about people like my mum?"

"Pretty much," Sirius says, "there's more to the story, but it's for when you're older." Sirius agrees with me that the prophecy is pretty much a red herring. Whatever his family's faults, they made sure he got a classical education along with all its warnings about putting stock in oracles. That, in fact, they're the means whereby powers not of this world provoke humans to working their own ruin. Harry is better off not knowing. So am I, come right to it, but it's not practical for me to un-know the prophecy wording. If I'm lucky, Dumbledore in the book gave Harry an edited version and I'm still ignorant of what Sybil Trelawney actually channelled from wherever oracular tommyrot originates. I'm carefully only using my knowledge to wind Dumbledore up about letting it get out where it could hurt people, and to misdirect him away from any confidence in schemes that take Trelawney's wretched babbling into account.

"And all these people that followed him, did they go to prison?" Harry's got a kid's sense of what's fair and right, and getting done when you've been naughty is a big part of it. Going to prison is how that happens to grownups, as he understands it.

"Some of them, yes," I tell him. "It doesn't work as well as it should in the magical world. There are some of them still out and about and pretending to be good people." Now is not the time to break it to him that it ain't exactly perfect in the nonmagical world either. The Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four are all still in prison here in 1986, after all, and all the real murderers are at liberty unless they're inside for other crimes.

Harry's face is a picture of indignation. "That's not _fair_."

"No, it isn't," I tell him. "Sirius and I, we're going to try and start things toward being better. Which is complicated grownup stuff, you're going to have to work hard at school to be able to understand it but we'll teach you as much as we can as we go along. For the moment, it's that a lot of the rich wizards are also the ones choosing to be stupid, and because they've got lots of money they can afford to pay not to go to prison."

Harry and Dudley alike have looks of horror on their faces at _that_ bit of news, and they're both outraged. Granted, it's not a _lot_ better in the non magical justice system, but there's a real difference between 'getting away with it because you're able to afford expensive lawyers' and 'getting away with it because you're able to bribe the entire system hard enough to accept a paper-thin defence without asking difficult questions or even holding an actual trial'.

I'm quite pleased that Dudley is as upset as Harry that the people who wanted Aunt Lily dead just for being who she is have mostly got away with it. _Especially_ when I frame it in those terms. He doesn't need to know that it's a kind of privilege he probably could have exercised himself, what with his dad's Old School Tie. _Sorry not sorry, Vernon, but I think your son's on the way to growing up with a social conscience_. He's been concentrating hard, scowling his way through his thoughts on the matter. "Is that what it means on Knight Rider about criminals bein' above the law?" he asks.

"Yes, Dudley, it is. There are people who are so rich the police and the courts and the prisons can't deal with them properly, I'm sorry to say, and when they go to the bad they often get away with it."

"Well, that's _wrong_." Sir Dudley's dander is very much _up_. _Don't lose that, sunshine. They'll try and knock it out of you and make you cynical_.

"It is, and it's why Sirius and I want to change things. We're hoping we won't need a talking car, though," I say, which earns me grins from the boys. Sirius has a baffled look on his face and I flash him a _roll with it_ look. He's got a long way to go before he can reach the cultural heights of _Knight Rider, Airwolf _and _The A-Team_. All of which are on the telly right now, to my massive delight. "We're going to have to persuade a lot of powerful people to use their power to do the right thing rather than just letting the baddies off. Persuade them that justice according to law ought to _mean something_. It's going to take a lot of work, just as it did in olden times when people without magic had to be persuaded that you couldn't do as you pleased just because you were the big baron or the king."

Harry's still not happy, though. "So my mum and dad are _dead_ and it's going to take all that hard work to get everyone who helped the man that did it put in prison?"

"I'm sorry, Harry, but that's how it is. I'm going to do that work, though. So's Sirius." Sirius and I have been talking about it a _lot_ and the state of the magical world has brought me to realise why cultural imperialism is, on occasion, so bloody _tempting_. Wading in and civilising the brutes with a Maxim-gun has a deep-down appeal - especially here, where it isn't a moral figleaf to cover the outright robbery that history's colonial empires actually _were_ at their heart.

"And what if they won't go along with what you're doing?" Harry's a smart kid, and he's spotted the obvious fly in this particular pot of ointment.

"I don't know about Sirius," I say, "But I'm ready to _make_ them go along with it. If they want to be a lot of savages who don't care for laws, well, there's a long history of methods for what they used to call 'pacifying savages'. It used to be just to make it easier to steal their countries and take their stuff, but sometimes - not often, but sometimes - it was to stop something horrible that people said was just the way things were. Sometimes, and I really think that this time is one of those times, it will be to make them _stop being savages_." And it's as I say it that I realise that at this point, having come to James and Lily's grave, that I'm entirely happy with this particular instance of cultural imperialism.

Any commitment I may have to trying the reformist route first is a purely intellectual one. I think, deep down, I want to go full Punisher on these fuckers once Tom's dealt with. Probably wouldn't hurt to thin the herd a bit before he makes his comeback tour, actually. It's one thing to accept, in the abstract, that the rule of law is the only real way and that vigilantism is an aberration that ought not be tolerated. When you're holding the hand of a little orphan boy by the side of his parents' grave? High-minded principle is a long way from being satisfying.

Sirius's tone is somewhat mournful. "It'll probably come to that, too. My family have been part of the problem for a very long time, and their sort won't go without a fight."

"When you say pacifying, what do you mean?" Petunia more than anyone here is aware that I can be a bit ethically flexible if I think I have right on my side. I did, after all, possess her shortly after I arrived, and her husband for the best part of a year. Sure, it worked out for the best in the end, but it still was a means that the end had to work hard to justify.

I sigh, and stand up. "When I say there's a history of this sort of thing, I'm thinking about the kind of thing the Empire got up to. Kipling documented some of it in one of his poems. _Long was the morn of slaughter, long was the list of the slain. Five score heads were taken, five score heads and twain. And the men of the First Shikaris, went back to their grave again_." Sirius has a worried look on his face. Petunia, like she vaguely recognises the quote.

I stick my hands in my pockets and look off into the distance. I take a moment to organise my thoughts, and then: "It's about an incident during the pacification of Burma in the late nineteenth century. They killed a hundred in reprisal for one officer's death, and stacked the heads on the officer's grave. The point I'm driving at is that if they won't answer to the civilised institution of the law, we'll have to resort to the much older institution of reprisal. And hope the survivors learn from that why they really ought not to undermine the institutions that keep them safe from such things. It'll be that much harder because we're talking about people who're used to having power: from their wealth, from their position in their society, and from the magic they have. And with a lot of them, they've warped their minds by practising the Dark Arts. You have to get good at summoning up hate and anger and all kinds of nasty emotions, and that marks you, changes you. So we can't make the mistake of half-measures if we go that route, either. Never do an enemy a _small_ injury, as the man said. To adapt another line from that poem to the task in front of us, _they swore that James and Lily, would go to their God in state, with fifty file of the enemy, to open heaven's gate_."

There's a long, uncomfortable silence. I'm hoping that couching it in those terms has made it go over the boys' heads, but Sirius looks particularly troubled. Estranged or not, I am basically talking about his people.

Petunia breaks it. The elocution lessons forgotten for the moment, it comes out in the hard-toned voice that only north-country matriarchs can pull off, "I'm not sure about the stack of heads," she says, "but them that killed my sister? I do dearly want them to _pay_."

"Moody was right about you," Sirius adds, "you're not even trying to _pretend_ you're not ruthless."

"If you want an end, you have to want the means," I say, "and we can hope all we want that the nastier means won't be needed, I think we both know that there's a hard core of the blighters who won't be moved by anything less."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Traffic laws: the speed limit on motorways (roads with M prefixes to their numbers) is 70mph. (Although, amusingly, Mal's knowledge of the relevant traffic laws is anachronistic. He, as I did, learned the Road Traffic Offences Act 1988, which won't be passed for another two years after he broke that particular speed limit.) The M4 runs from London to Bristol, while the M5 goes from there southward toward Plymouth. I've situated Godric's Hollow on the eastern side of the Exmoor national park, just over the county line between Somerset and Devon. From which Hagrid could plausibly have flown over Bristol on his way to Surrey, and I'm just not getting in to the missing time if he went straight from one to the other. JKR admitted she goofed on that one, so I'm not going to find sinister explanations. Other fanfic authors _have_.

Double yellow lines next to the kerb indicate that no parking is permitted there at any time. (Single yellow lines are for restricted parking, with the restrictions usually posted nearby.) There was a big change in parking enforcement in the early 2000s that turned on-street parking into a revenue generator for local government, so Mal is used to finding it harder to park and almost certainly having to put coins in a machine. Or, as is becoming more common, swearing at a machine that only takes cards and does so unreliably.

Spar shops are a franchise business, running local shops for local people (shout-out to those of you who get _that_ reference!) that started in the Netherlands and spread across the world. Looking at the demographic data that the various sites I post on give, most of you are in countries Spar hasn't reached yet. Give it time.

Red Poppies have been a particular emblem of remembrance for the war dead since WW1: they grow quickly in disturbed earth, such as is found in areas of trench warfare. Not wearing one around Remembrance Day - the nearest Sunday to 11th November - is something of a social faux pas. They're sold in aid of the Royal British Legion, which supports the forces and their veterans.

Pals Battalions: some _genius_ in the 1914 Ministry of War thought it would help recruitment if men could be guaranteed serving alongside their friends and neighbours. When the resulting units were fed into meat-grinders like the Battle of the Somme, the tragedy was horribly focussed. The Accrington Pals - one company of which battalion was recruited from the neighbourhood where I sit and write this - famously took 585 casualties in the first hour. Out of 700 men. What that must have done to close-knit communities makes a pauper of imagination. Especially since the first rumour to reach Accrington was that there had been only seven survivors...

Am I alone, by the way, in wondering how a kid supposedly isolated from the magical world and not told about his heritage is recognisable to more than one mage during his pre-hogwarts years? No less than three in Chapter 2 of Philosopher's Stone, and then Tom the Barman in the Leaky Cauldron. Sure, it's just a throwaway scene-setting detail for Harry's suspicions that he's Not Like The Dursleys, but it takes a more sinister cast when you think through the implications. And thinking through the implications is what fanfic is _for…._

The poem Mal quotes unattributed in the Graveyard is Kipling's Grave Of The Hundred Head. Whether it's based on a real incident or not, I have no idea. It's certainly plausible for that period of the Empire. He wrote later poems about the same campaign that were considerably toned down which were a lot less sanguinary, so it may be that it was a soldiers' story that shrank considerably under the scrutiny of official investigation and actual history.

Fanfic Recommendation: The Sum of Their Parts by holdmybeer. On FFN only as far as I know, and it seemed apropos to have a story about magical revolution after Mal got his dander up about the state of wizarding justice.


	19. Form fours, right turn

DISCLAIMER: Did the Family Tree JKR published for the Blacks directly contradict material in the books as well as not making any sense on its own merits? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

NOTE: Yes, missed last week. This started out one way, and when I had it nearly finished I had a load of better ideas. So I rewrote it. The fact that this story is proving popular means I'm actually taking some trouble over it at long last. Still not doing second drafts, mind. I'm barely bothering with spell-check. And I'm slightly late due to being ill. Not, as far as I can tell, Coronavirus (symptoms are all wrong) but I still feel like fried tripe.

* * *

CHAPTER 19

_Petunia breaks it. The elocution lessons forgotten for the moment, it comes out in the hard-toned voice that only north-country matriarchs can pull off, "I'm not sure about the stack of heads," she says, "but them that killed my sister? I do dearly want them to _pay_."_

"_Moody was right about you," Sirius adds, "you're not even trying to pretend you're not ruthless."_

"_If you want an end, you have to want the means," I say, "and we can hope all we want that the nastier means won't be needed, I think we both know that there's a hard core of the blighters whe won't be moved by anything less."_

-oOo-

"Mal?"

I'm working on my side project when Sirius sticks his head around the door to interrupt me. "Yes?" I say, keeping my eyes on the map with the drawing-pins in it. Beyond 'close to but not actually in major population centres' I'm not getting a pattern. I may have to widen the search beyond the two counties I've done so far. And, for that matter, take a look at this under a dose of ageing potion _and_ while incorporeal. A 7-year-old's brain, even the rather good one I got out of James and Lily's genes, just isn't as capable of as much as an adult one, nor the chilly cogitation of a roaming spectre.

"Before I get to what I came in for, can I raise a small concern?"

"Raise away, Sirius, I could do with a break from this."

"Yes, well, it's about this." He waves a hand to encompass the wall full of pinned up news clippings, the map, and post-it notes. The red yarn is wholly unnecessary, I just included it for the aesthetics of the thing. "I've been catching up with the whole telly and movies thing, and every time I've seen something like this the person doing it has been at least a _bit_ of a nutter, if not completely mental."

I grin back at him. "It's also a convenient method of organising a lot of information. Which, I admit, I've arranged to look a bit like the big wall of crazy you get in your better dramatic presentations. You've had six months to get used to my sense of humour, you really need to start learning to cope."

He snorts. "_Alleged_ humour. Pardon my curiosity: what's it all about?"

"Tracking incidents from the last war in a way that gets around Ministry filtering. No cover-up is perfect, and, well, it's the _Ministry_. The Statute of Secrecy does a lot to keep this stuff out of the forefront of peoples' minds, but the supplementary work the Ministry does is, well, a bit shit to be honest. They left traces _everywhere_." The Statute of Secrecy is a honking big piece of magic as well as a law. The ordinary nothing-to-see-here charms were well developed magic even as early as the 17th century, and amping them up to cover all of magic all over the world - over Europe to start with, but it spread with colonialism - was mostly an exercise in power-boosting by getting hundreds of mages working in concert rather than anything _novel_. It still needs help, which the job of obliviators and magical clean-up crews. Who could, if I'm any judge, use a great deal more training. I'm figuring out the skills of open-source intelligence analysis as I go along and _still_ catching them at it, it wouldn't even _slightly_ surprise me to learn that HM Government has an office of clever buggers doing the same thing a lot more effectively.

"Oh!" Sirius is a smart chap, and gets it immediately, "you can track Death Eater attacks by shoddy cover-up stories in the muggle press?"

"Yup. From style alone I can tell you where the boundaries between the obliviator teams are. Greater Manchester favours gas explosions, all of the Cumbria teams favour freak weather, and East Lancashire likes carbon monoxide poisoning, but only as part of a broader portfolio of cover-ups. Someone on _that_ team has a good grasp of how things _actually_ work in the non magical world, though. Just needs to work on his reliance on stereotyped phrases, make them match the ones the journalists use themselves."

"Huh. I don't suppose I should be surprised that the Ministry don't get it right. Where's Cumbria?"

I lightly slap my forehead. "Of course, you'd not know. The old counties of Cumberland and Westmorland were merged in '74. Big reorganisation back then. Liverpool and Manchester got split off from Lancashire, and the borders of the counties were shifted about to make more sense of where people actually lived. The Magical government is still using the old county lines, which is why they think Rutland still exists. Anyway, I've done the part of the country I lived in longest, I'm going to repeat this for the rest of the country, bit by bit. When the war starts up again we'll have a complete picture of enemy tactics and standard operating procedures."

In the meantime, of course, _I_ have a picture of what might have happened to my old family. But not, unfortunately, any better clue as to whether it was Death Eaters or one of my siblings having a serious magical accident from the abuse. Figuring out which of these incidents are Death Eater attacks and which are Amazing Exploding Abused Children is going to be a task and a half. _Some _of them are certainly attacks, there's a _huge_ drop off in incidents after Halloween '81. Not to zero though, which is concerning. Before I died I saw more than one speculation that muggleborns' first accidental magic was often also the occasion of someone arranging them a little 'accident'.

"Good work. _Bloody_ good work. We could've used something like this last time around."

I wave a hand. "I'm not exactly an expert in this sort of thing, but knowing it's possible is half the battle. Probably be able to refine it as we go."

"Well, if you need an assistant for this, one of my old school friends got back in touch. He's just back from abroad, and he tells me he's between jobs."

"Oh?" I'm guessing he means Remus Lupin, of whom I have no high opinion based on his portrayal in the books. "Well, if he's solidly on our side then even someone to take over the more menial bits of this would help. Any talent he has past that will be a bonus."

"I'll let him know, you can interview him, see if he suits. He'll get prickly if I try and hire him, thinks I'd be giving him charity or some such nonsense."

"Familiar with the type." I notice that Sirius hasn't mentioned that Remus - I'm pretty sure it's him - is a werewolf. Doubtless it'll come up sooner or later. Along with him probably being Dumbledore's attempt to get a spy among us: his return from foreign parts is _awfully_ conveniently timed. That's for the future. There's a loose end in our conversation, and I notice Sirius is holding a book. "You mentioned coming in here for a reason?"

"Oh, right, yes, sorry, that. You know you've got this idea of changing public opinion about James, Lily and Harry, and, what was it you called it? PR warfare?"

"You've had ideas?"

"A rather good one, which I got to by a roundabout route. Thought I'd go out in disguise, take the tenor of the clans sort of thing. Figure out what people are saying, so we know the size and shape of the job."

Translation: he can't go out drinking wearing his own face for the time being. While everyone knows he was exonerated, they're still treating him oddly. Whether he's been trying to pull despite being in self-transfigured disguise I don't know and haven't pried. He certainly hasn't brought anyone home yet, nor stayed out overnight. "What did you learn?"

"Two things. First one is that public opinion is about where we thought it was. Harry's the boy-who-lived, blah blah blah, nobody remembers James and Lily, all kinds of speculation about what Dumbledore did with Harry. The second one is more interesting. I went in some of the seamier places, Dung Fletcher clued me in last time around, he's Dumbledore's pet lowlife, and there were others that I had to learn about growing up because my family have some thoroughly disreputable people on retainer. And while they're not talking about the whole Harry thing, someone _is_ putting out feelers among the various ruffians the Death Eaters used for their dirty work. Which is how I got a job as an assassin." He has a bright, shit-eating grin on his face as he says this last.

I've got a fairly good idea why that would be. "Let me guess, you've been hired to kill the notorious Sirius Black?"

"Aw, you guessed it." Neither of us, of course, is going to crack on that we're even slightly concerned by this. Mostly because it wouldn't do a bit of good to panic in any way, but also because we're English, damn yer eyes, and we don't unstiffen our upper lips over something as footling as an assassination plot.

We save that sort of thing for the cricket results. Or quidditch results, in Sirius's case.

I wave off the backhanded compliment for my insight, "Not too hard to figure out. If you die without issue, there's a whole lot of entailed property that will fall to your cousin Narcissa, and through her, her son Draco. Between your mother and Abraxas and Lucius Malfoy, that's a dirty great big motive. I'm guessing you didn't ask for money up front?"

"Don't know how it works in the muggle world, but magical assassins are strictly cash on delivery. Apparently I'm worth five thousand galleons dead, and anything up to two thousand for information-leading-to. We exchanged owl-post boxes for future contact, which is pretty normal."

"Should I be alarmed that you know how to negotiate a contract killing?"

"That would be my education as a scion of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black. Part of being a well-rounded wizard." Sirius strikes a nose-in-the-air pose that is somewhat undermined by the combination of Ron Hill pants and a Whitesnake t-shirt.

"Well, forewarned is forearmed. Means we're going to have to be on alert if you're out with Harry at all." I'm not terribly worried about Harry's safety, of course. He has the full weight of the magical Defence of the Realm keeping him hale and sound. Sirius having to fight for his life would be an upsetting sight for the little man, though. "You _have_ been careful about keeping this address out of wizard hands, right?"

"Oh, certainly. My address of record is a box in Diagon Alley. Keeping one's home off Ministry records is a time-honoured tradition. And the only wizard other than you who's seen me undisguised since I came to visit you that day is my grandfather. Who, by the way, has finally come around to re-settling the entails _general magique_ rather than _pur et magique_. That briefing paper you wrote on magical genetics has convinced him that we need to be open to letting a few half-bloods into the fold. Nothing else, I'm the only live Blacks of breeding age who aren't in jail or disowned are Narcissa and yours truly. He's accepted that he can't afford to be picky. He clammed up on the subject of the Malfoys, there's a story there I'm sure. No idea what, but he seems keen to keep the estate out of that family's hands. Andromeda, well, _she_ has made it quite clear she's not coming back in the fold, but is making noises about having us over for dinner."

The paper he's talking about is complete bollocks of course. I took some basic medical textbook stuff about the dangers of inbreeding and rewrote it in my best approximation of magical-theory gibberish, together with a few paragraphs on squibhood through a child's innate magic devoting itself to keep the child alive rather than dying of hereditary disease, leaving nothing left over for spellcasting. If there was any _actual_ magical genetics in what I wrote, it was purely by accident. "Glad to be of help, and tell Andromeda I'd love to come, whenever's convenient. You know what my schedule is like." I've actually met the Tonks family: extraordinarily nice people. And the schedule is a bit full over the upcoming Easter holidays, since Marge is coming to stay. Which means _both_ boys want to spend as much time as possible at our house. She might have cleaned up her act, but she's still a complete horrorshow, especially to little boys. Taking them for dinner with Harry's magical cousins might be a good change of pace for them. "And yes, I too am curious about what your grandfather's beef with the Malfoys might be, let's make a note to look into that. What's the book?"

"_This_ is how we're going to shift public opinion." He holds up the book. It's got a smiling, winking, blond-haired wizard on the cover, and the title _Gadding With Ghouls_ printed in considerably smaller type than the author's name. Gilderoy Lockhart.

I'd not forgotten about him, I saw a big display of Break With A Banshee on the shelves at Flourish and Blotts last year. There are, however, limits to what I can do about the infamies and injustices of magical Britain and stopping a con artist is beyond them. Still, if Sirius has an idea for how to get some use out of the blighter? "Let's hear it, then?"

"While I was out negotiating my own contract killing, I happened to pass Flourish and Blotts while there was an event on featuring this chap, and this, his second book. Man's a raging self-publicist, and a big hit with the witches. Which, fair enough, he's got it, let him flaunt it. And he _is_ good at the promotional side of things, he drew a big crowd for the signing he was doing. Anyway, I got a copy - signed, naturally - out of sheer curiosity. It's bollocks from start to finish, but well written bollocks that sells like hot cakes, so old Blott tells me. My plan is that we offer him a nice fat bag of galleons to publish some of that rhetorical vitriol you come out with and get it into every home in the country. Hopefully we don't have to sweeten the pot by letting him interview Harry -"

"Nah," I say, seeing where Sirius is going with this and thinking up a few refinements off the cuff. "The nearest we'll let him have is a full statement on behalf of Harry's guardians, conditions of anonymity due to the risk of rogue followers of You-Know-Who or some such flim-flam. I can polyjuice as Petunia and give him an interview with Lily's sister." Petunia slinging off about Dumbledore would be kind of fun, but we've got a specific narrative to sell and I think I might do a better job than the Gossip Queen Of Little Whinging. A more _focussed_ one, at any rate. "Tell him that boosting Lily's part in the whole thing is something he can sell as righting an injustice done to witches everywhere, and we leave it to him how much action he uses that to get."

"_That_ is a good selling point, if I'm any judge. The man I saw was in it for the attention from the witches first, the fame second, and the money third. Paying him to publish an entire book of pick-up line material? He'll take our hand off. Here, I'll leave this for you, get an idea of his style, I'll send him an owl to set up a meeting."

"Make sure you tell him he's getting Sirius Black's first interview since getting out of Azkaban, too."

-oOo-

It has been more than six months, and the sense of horror about the old house hasn't faded, as far as I can remember. There are definite signs of memory tampering on all of the neighbours who were living here back in '81, but then I knew to expect that.

It's _possible_ to recover obliviated memories, as memory charms don't alter the underlying brain structures in which the memories are laid down. Giving the subject access to the original memories - which won't have been altered by the natural process of recall, and so may well be more reliable than untampered memories - is done by breaking the charm that hides them from the conscious mind. However, the only method I know from Tom is the horribly destructive emergencies-only technique. Tom's corpus of magical knowledge is full of gaps like that: he'd prioritise the nastiest, most brute-force method as a point of principle and get around to the elegant stuff later only if he had a pressing need. Which is to say, generally not at all. He was an absolute _master_ of penny-wise-pound-foolish decision-making of that sort.

(Unexpected bonus: while spooking about reading minds, I find out exactly who it was who set fire to the for-sale board at Number 3 when word got out that the "Sold" sticker had gone up because an asian family had bought it. I'd never have figured the mild-mannered accountant from number 8 for an arson-minded racist.)

Crossing the property line again, I reprise the sense of malignity that clings to the old place. However the occupants of this place died - I'm trying to maintain a sense of emotional distance from the deaths of my cross-dimensional siblings and it's _not working_ \- they did not go easy.

Or painlessly. I'm used to being numb to touch and scent and temperature when I'm incorporeal. Being numb generally: out of my sleeve I'm pure mind. The closer I get to the front door, the more I can taste blood in my mouth, feel the chill in the night air and shiver, as from hearing nails down a blackboard.

I've picked an approach to the front door because that is the polite approach. If there's something haunting this place, I mean to treat it with _respect_. The power's off so the doorbell doesn't work, and knocking with a bit of broken flagstone produces no response. I have observed the proprieties, though, so I ghost through the front door.

Inside, the place is a mess. The carpet is scorched and shredded mounded here and there with plasterboard fallen from the ceiling. All of the internal doors are hanging on one hinge at most where they're not shattered entirely. The wallpaper is peeled off in stiff, angular loops and mottled with mildew. I've picked a full moon to return on, and the grey, sad light that makes it through the dirt on the shattered double-glazing just about lets me pick out that everything has a fine layer of soot on it.

It really _does_ look like everything got burned and then put out by fire-engine hoses. Is this the actual damage that was done as part of the incident or by the cover-up? The sense of malignity says that this isn't set-dressing: this is how everyone died. I get no sense of anything lurking to pounce, but then I wouldn't, would I? I have a series of apparation jumps mapped out in my mind, starting with an emergency jump a thousand feet straight up and thence to the Churchyard of St. Eadmer - home to one of Skriker's kin - before drunkard's-walking across the country to throw off any pursuit that the spectral hound doesn't deter.

I know very little about examining a scene-of-crime beyond what I've picked up from having a kid reading for a Forensic science degree. What _is_ apparent, however, is that all the doors on the ground floor are blown out in the same direction. This particular standard-pattern estate house had a two-flight staircase rather than the more usual single-flight pattern, which meant it had a much bigger under-stairs cupboard than most. And that seems to have been the epicentre of the blast: the door is entirely off and thrown clear across the hall to be partly embedded in the living-room door. The cracks in the ceiling radiate out from there, too, like whatever it was was powerful enough to flex the joists of the first floor up enough to crack the artexed plasterboard of the ceiling.

I think for a moment about exploring the rest of the building before looking in to what is surely the centre of the destruction. I _should_. It is, after all, the sensible thing to do: time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted as the proverb has it. Trouble is, even with all the emotion-having bits of me left sleeping down in Surrey, I'm not sure I can stand to do it. This house may have been the scene of years of childhood misery, but it's still _home _and seeing it wrecked like this _hurts_.

I steel myself, though. Upstairs is more-or-less untouched as to fire and water damage, although everything is knocked over by whatever exploded downstairs and it's all covered in mildew. I check the bedroom that, at the date this happened, I was still sharing with my little brother. My collection of 2000ADs is still present and correct, although it's probably going to need some restoring attention.

Downstairs, the kitchen is just water-damaged with everything knocked over or spilt. The dining room likewise. The living room is another focus of devastation. And, burnt into the wallpaper next to the fireplace, a silhouette. Like someone was stuck to the wall and then burnt. I had decades of beef with the likely victim there - either of them, really - but there are some things you just don't wish on _anyone_.

In the cupboard under the stairs the gas meter is capped off with big warning labels, all of the stuff that was stored there seems to have been removed and heaped in the hallway to let the bloke from the Gas Board in. And the shadows are _moving_.

"Hello?" I venture, hovering at the doorway.

There's a hiss and a snarl.

"I'm here to help, if I can," I say, going for my most soothing voice. I and all my siblings were utter powder-kegs until we got old enough to get help: anything spawned out of their magic is going to be on a hair trigger.

_Getoutfemoralarteryleaveusalonewipethatlookoffyourfacebackoff._

Okay, not coherent.

Except I can hear shushing.

"Are you a policeman?" I recognise the voice. It's my little sister. The older of the two, and the sanest of the four of us. It's got a hollow, echoey tone to it that I know from Tom's experience with ghosts.

"No, but I'm here to help. Who's in there with you, Kate?"

"Mary. And the boys, but they're all angry." This is going to be difficult. In '81 Kate was about four. And Mary was a baby. My brother and I were eleven and eight. And if they - or their ghosts, since that's what I'm talking to - have gone monsters-from-the-id then there's nobody to talk to who's going to make any sense. Kate will try her best, but the ghost of a pre-school child isn't up to much.

Hell, if I was here in the flesh, _I_ wouldn't be making any sense. Whatever happened here, it _killed children._ It's a toss-up between insensate grief and berzerk fury.

Tom never tried it, but it _is_ possible to establish legilimentic contact with ghosts. "Kate, can you look into my eyes, please? I want to see that you're OK."

There's more growling, and whispers to calm her brothers down. I'm making sure to not cross the threshold into the cupboard, lest I get ripped apart. Dismembered by one's own mad ghost transdimensional twin is probably an end of enough dramatic irony to implode the universe, I reckon.

Kate emerges from the shadows. I'd forgotten what a cute kid she was. The burns - still fresh and weeping silvery ghost-stuff - detract from that a bit. Her hair is mostly gone along one side, but she still has both her eyes.

Bad men. Skellington faces. Black coats. The boys, all angry. Mummy screaming. Daddy shouting. Mummy and Daddy both screaming. Hiding under the stairs, the boys won't say why. The boys get _really_ cross. They hurt one of the bad men. Fire. And then it's quiet. If we hide, they'll all go _away_.

Kate didn't see much, and the scum wore masks. The whole point of the Death Eater regalia was to thwart identification evidence. I reckon I'm just going to have to go after _all_ the bastards. While I'm in Kate's mind I do a little psychic surgery, removing the worst of it. Not just the pain of dying, but the sight of her brothers warping into eldritch monstrosities. If there _is_ a 'Next Great Adventure' she'll enjoy it more without carrying that burden.

When I'm done, I call out "Skriker!"

"Who's Skriker?"

"He's my dog," I say, as the Good Boy himself fades into being from the shadows, tail wagging. He comes when called, and I simply can't tell him he's a Good Boy enough. "I'd like you and Mary and the boys to go for a walk with Skriker. He'll take you where you need to go. He's the best doggy every, and he likes to go for walks with children."

Nobody needs convincing: they weren't ghosts through unfinished business, but because they were frightened to leave their hiding place. With a great big hound herding them along, they're a _lot_ more confident.

Where _is_ the line between justice and vengeance, anyway?

-oOo-

"Well, _fuck_."

"Problem?" Sirius looks up from the correspondence he'd been working on. I'm assuming it's correspondence, he could be writing the next great magical novel for all I've been paying attention.

I, for my part, had just come up from my first foray into my shiny new Pensieve. "Yeah," I say, wiping at the purely psychosomatic feeling of wetness I have on my face. For some reason my subconscious thinks that having immersed my face in a bowl of fluid, it should be wet when it comes out. "Turns out that the theory that a Pensieve is actually Divination magic has a lot more to it than anyone thought. And that divination has a _range_, blast it."

"Oh? Going to have to unpack that one for me."

"Yeah, well, it goes like this: you use a Pensieve to examine memories, and you always see more detail in the Pensieve than the donor of the memory did at the time. Theory one is that this is because human perception is woolly and human recall even woollier, so what you perceive and recall is a lot less than what you saw and remembered, and the pensieve remedies the defects. Which, maybe. It's got problems based around the very real science of how memories are stored and recalled in human brains. Supporters of the theory just say that clearly our brains and senses are better at this sort of thing than our conscious memory-recalling minds."

"And that's not the case?"

"I'm pretty sure that I've just entirely falsified that hypothesis. Which leaves the other theory. You know I've mentioned spending part of my existence outside time, yeah?"

"I recall, yes. Got to admit, thought it was just the usual seer showmanship."

"Sort of, a bit. Mostly to avoid difficult questions about just what I actually _am_ capable of, which there's good reason to keep schtum about. It is true, though, in as much as I've spent time in another universe entirely. Where, it turns out, Pensieves can't reach. The wretched thing doesn't let me view a memory, it lets me scry a time and place _defined_ by a memory. And it can't reach outside the universe. Basically, if I can't recall it the normal way, any information I got while I was there is _gone_. Or subject to the fuzziness of normal memory, which is a pain in the arse. I can examine memories from those times and places, but they're just like regular recall, just stabilised a bit by the pensieve." Which _is_ useful in its own way: buggering up one's own memories by repeated recall is a documented phenomenon.

It has some interesting implications for the difference in magical and normal recollection, too. I've observed before that going into a memory in dreams is a lot sharper and less surreal if you've got magic than it is otherwise, and at this point I'm starting to think that that's not a function of the memory so much as it is the magic boosting one's ability to visualise. Just like transfiguration lets you shape the outside world, mind magics let you shape the inner world. Or so runs my off-the-cuff theorising, at any rate. No idea how I'd control for it if I ever get time to run experiments.

"The other problem," I go on, "is that I can't seem to go examine a memory of a memory. The link at one remove isn't strong enough, unfortunately."

Sirius looks baffled.

"You remember me telling you I had cause to fight one of Tom's shades?"

"The one that was attached to Harry? Yeah, I recall. You got some of his _memories_ out of that?"

"Most of his life up to October '81, although I've been being careful about integrating those into my own mind. The fraction I've taken aboard is bad enough. I thought I might be able to use the Pensieve to look at the memories without being personally contaminated, but no go. Same for trying to use the memories I _have_ integrated in the Pensieve. I get nothing better than Tom's own direct recollection." I've also got nothing better than little Kate's direct recollection, which is a problem. There are probably all kinds of identifying clues if you can examine a memory of masked mages closely enough. And I want to _prioritise_. Can't say that out loud, though.

"Do you really _need_ those?"

"No idea until I look at them. I mean, I'm _probably_ never going to need the last moments of Murder Victim Number Forty-Seven, whoever it was, but until I've seen it I don't _know_. On the one hand I want to go through that whole big pile of memory to ensure I'm as effective as I can be. On the other, I _don't_ want to take the risk of becoming more like Tom because I've edited my own personal past to include so much dark magic and arsehole behaviour."

"You think that's a risk?"

I shrug. "We are the sum of our memories to date, are we not? As things stand, I've got two lots of childhood memories, and it's easy enough to keep 'em separate: I was never an orphan in 1930s London. After that, things get a bit ... fuzzier. You've noticed that I'm at least _talking_ a ruthless game, and sure, some of that is purely me. I was a somewhat damaged individual for most of my first life, and only really started recovering properly in the last ten years of it. Thing is, a lot of the foul temper I had, that people like me generally have, comes from the changes in your brain that bad experiences cause. I don't have that brain any more, so where is the nastiness coming from?"

"What's that phrase you use? The 'purview of the conundrums of philosophy?'"

"Yeah. Philosophy of Identity is an absolute bugger, not least because of the existential doubt you get into when you really start thinking about it. And can I afford existential doubt while I'm trying to integrate the personality of a magical serial killer? I think _not_."

Sirius gives an over-dramatic shudder. "I'm leaving that one to you, then. But, look, I don't want to shut you out. Therapists aren't a thing for wizards, although from what you've told me they're useful. So, you know, if you want me to sit down and make encouraging noises while you talk about the problem, let me know. I wouldn't know where to start actually _helping_, but as long as you're willing to listen to me complain about my family, it seems only fair I help in return."

"Works," I agree. "For now, though, I've got to let Perenelle know what I just learned, and that we're stuck with brute recall and arithmantic prognostication for the investment planning seminar we've got coming up. What're you working on?"

Sirius lays his quill down and leans back in the classic too-long-at-a-desk stretch and neck-crick. "Keeping up with some of my old contacts from the war. It, well, it cut across the traditional light-and-dark lines. And not everyone on the dark side was that bothered about muggles and muggleborns, to put it in their terms. Some of them actually knew and _liked_ people like that, on the fringes of the magical world there's a lot more integration goes on than is officially recognised. The Statute of Secrecy is more like the Statute of Polite Discretion in some neighbourhoods. So they want to help, but they still couldn't be seen to be helping any cause Dumbledore was leader of. So they'd pass word to me, because whatever else I was, I was a Black."

I've learned since Sirius moved in that Dark Magic isn't as simple as Maleficium - which is your classic dark-side-of-the-Force stuff, shortcuts for second-raters - and what I've been calling Transgressive Magic, the stuff that requires criminal and unethical acts to work. There's also a whole corpus of magic that is considered dark for the same reason that, in the muggle world, some perfectly innocent practices are treated as anathema because they stem from the wrong religion, culture, or brand of politics. Magic termed 'dark' in the same way that Vernon terms entire branches of food 'foreign muck'.

And, in a country like Britain, there is a _lot_ of that sort of thing going on. Successive waves of invaders and cultures constantly put down their predecessors as dark, savage, _barbaric_. The Romans turned up and slaughtered the Druids (who almost certainly had done the same in turn to the magicians of the Beaker People) and called their magecraft barbarism, including what might be a blood libel of human sacrifice (but probably isn't, the archaeologists keep finding remains that match the descriptions).

The Anglo-Saxons rooted out the magic of the Britons left high-and-dry by the departure of the Romans, condemning the last vestiges of it in the magical codicils to the Synod of Whitby. Their Viking and Dane cousins, who came along later, came in for much of the same condemnation. The Normans turned up just after Hogwarts was founded and made _their _changes to what was considered acceptable magic. (Since they affected more than half of the population in Hogwarts' catchment area, my money is on this for the _real_ reason Salazar Slytherin flounced).

The next big change was the Reformation, condemning the medieval practises of the rural recusants as heathen at best and diabolism at worst (and a big motivation for letting the non-magical authorities hang the Lancashire Witches). Finally, the Victorian era saw a big condemnation of non-European magic as barbarism. Got to justify that colonialism somehow, and they had the example of Rome and the druids to draw on: if they're mired in the Dark, the poor dears, the conquest is for their own good.

"And they're still willing to talk to you after you got outed at your trial as working for Dumbledore?" I'm honestly curious. Dumbledore is very much a product of his time, which gave the world Jingoism, Muscular Christianity and the absolute high-water mark of Colonialism. It might be that he's completely fine with the older magics, but the kind of people who practise that sort of thing have _experience_ with such men and wouldn't want to find out the hard way.

"I was always pretty clear that I was more against the Death Eaters than for Dumbledore. Which was a necessary fiction at the time, but a lot nearer the truth after the old git dropped me in the cacky," Sirius shrugs, "and while I've got a definite motive for rebuilding my old network, what with the whole assassination thing, I want it for when the fighting starts again. What was it you said the other day? 'The best time to get paranoid is _before_ they start plotting against you."

It _does _sound like something I'd say, but I don't recall the precise wording I used. However, Sirius has a fairly sizeable stack of letters, most of it quite surprisingly on non-parchment stationery. "Anything in particular turned up?"

"Not really," he says, "since there are a limited number of brokers for this sort of deal there's no way to tell who actually wants me dead from that alone. All of the people we suspect would go through the same brokers, and _they_ won't talk."

"And getting hold of one of the assassins won't give us more of a clue?" From the sounds, magical assassination is well served for cut-outs and anonymity. This seems altogether less well-policed than the non-magical world, where every instance I ever heard of had the would-be hirer talking to an undercover detective constable in fairly short order.

Sirius shrugs, rocks a hand. "A pure freelancer who's after the basic reward? No. On the other hand, if someone spots me and claims the _information_ reward, _that_ might see them send someone they have on retainer. Interrogating them probably won't be easy, of course, but it'd be a start."

I have some advantages vis a vis extracting information from unwilling subjects. Anyone willing to murder for hire, I reckon, will deserve me giving them the full Tom Riddle. Which means that what Sirius is suggesting is a better idea than he appears to think. "So, say your undercover identity grasses you up and we set an ambush? How likely are they to send a team?" Capturing one guy when there's two of us should be easy enough, but what little I know of assassination it's a team sport.

"Unlikely. Most hitters have this whole lone wolf thing going on. They're not a community of trusting and cooperative sorts. Not, you might say, on board with the whole Hufflepuff ethos."

"For which we should be truly thankful. Hard-working, team-oriented contract killers? We'd be _proper_ fucked."

Sirius laughs out loud at that one. "We should have a think about what kind of ambush we want to set, and how I can plausibly inform on it. And how many other people we can recruit to help?"

"Two of us against one guy, though. Are we going to _need_ anyone else? We're going to make someone softly and suddenly vanish away, the fewer witnesses the better."

"Even so. Capture is harder than killing, having help to prevent an escape could make the difference."

I shrug. "I was thinking in terms of an invisibility cloak and a blunt instrument. Get the target focussed on what he thinks is his prey and - _wallop!_" I slap my fist into a cupped hand.

Sirius gives me a Hard Stare.

I sigh. "Look, if this gives us a lead back to whoever wants you dead, we're probably going to have to do something we don't want witnesses for, even if it's just informing them that we can afford the kind of bounty that will have every hitter from the Urals to the Yukon looking for a piece of the action," Sirius's dealings with his grandfather to settle the Black estate has given me an idea of what constitutes wizarding wealth, and Tom Riddle could have straight up _bought_ the Ministry if he hadn't had a psychotic attachment to his kill-trophy bank account, "_Especially_ not the kind of witness who'll allow words like 'premeditated' to be thrown around the courtroom. A courtroom, I might remind you, that is stacked in favour of the kind of people we're dealing with here."

"Point."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

English Counties and the reforms of 1974: county boundaries were set by a lot of historical accidents and within the counties local government wasn't so much instituted as _evolved._ There were reforms in the 19th century that divided the counties into boroughs (as a standard thing, most of them already worked that way) and then in 1974 there was a _big_ reform that merged a few counties - losing Westmorland and Cumberland to make Cumbria, and Rutland into Leicestershire - and separated five conurbations from their surrounding counties to make metropolitan counties on the same model Greater London had been using for decades. Over forty years later people are still complaining about the results (Southport _really_ don't like being part of Merseyside) and there were some tweaks in '97 that resulted in Rutland becoming a thing again.

Entails _pur et magique_. Entailed property is property that passes without need for a probated will by operation of law, and other than titles of nobility has to be resettled each generation. (More explanation than that requires a textbook, it's a lawyers' specialty all of its own.) The formal name for the title - and it's really old law, so the jargon is still in Norman French - is _estate in fee tail_. Fee tail male used to be the standard, limiting the entail to male heirs 'of the body' ie not adopted sons. Fee tail general was possible and sometimes used. The magical world never uses fee tail male - necromancy being a thing means that angry witches can punish your chauvinism _post mortem - _but uses tail general magique and tail general pur et magique, the latter limiting the entail to magical heirs with four magical grandparents.

I've got a whole thing of how that meant that Harry couldn't inherit any more than the unentailed 12 Grimmauld Place and the contents of the vault (Regulus died and Sirius was estranged, both too young to re-settle anything else, and Walburga was too mad to sign anything by the end) but all the rest of the property was re-settled elsewhere in the family while Sirius was in Azkaban. It's how I'd've done it if I'd had the Blacks as clients.

The arson-minded racist at number 8: based on a true story, alas. (Apart from finding out who did it, of course.) Note for foreigners: Asian in a British context generally means the subcontinent, not the far east, which community in Britain is overwhelmingly Chinese. Anyway, burning the estate agent's board was about the limit of the harassment that I saw, and their daughter played with my little sisters since they were of like age.

2000AD: the comic principally famous for Judge Dredd, although it contained a lot more than that. Strontium Dog, the ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis the Warlock, Slàine … brb off to weep for the nostalgia of it all.

Pensieves being divination devices that let you scry past events turns up in two fanfics that I know of - Potter Who and the Wossname's Thingummy (previously recommended) and Enter The Dragon by Dunkelzahn on Questionable Questing. No idea which it's original to if either, but both stories are recommendations of mine.

I put in the bit about the Druids not just because of their place in a long chain of cultures that have been designated barbaric and suppressed - they may well have been, archaeologists do keep finding ritually-killed corpses in peat bogs from the right times and places to be Druidic sacrifices - but also because of all the horseshit one sees in Harry Potter fanfics about Druids surviving into modern times (the Roman Empire was _thorough: _modern druidism was made up out of whole cloth in the early 19th century).

As for dominant cultures demonising subordinate cultures and their practises, that has happened so many times it's not even funny. Just about every culture has done it when they've had the chance. Jingoism is a remarkably popular response to outsiders, especially when you want to kill them and take their stuff. Upper class wizards condemning the practices of poor, backwoods-rural mages as 'dark arts'? It'd be more surprising if it _didn't_ happen. The Blacks being the rare exception and acquiring loyal retainers as a result isn't too much of a stretch. Neither is them getting a bad name because they associate with _those_ people…

Fanfic Recommendation: Wish Carefully by Ten Toes. In which we see what happens when a revolutionary movement by and for the one per cent actually _wins_. Which is to say, Nothing Good.


	20. Notes From The Field

DISCLAIMER: Does the Potterverse wizarding Britain not include any of the _actual_ magical families of British history? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

This is a bit of a bonus chapter. Things that aren't easily fitted in elsewhere, but were ideas I had that I thought good enough to write down. Since we're all cooped up in our homes waiting for the current pestilence to pass us by, I collected them together and here they are, as a sort of Drabble Sausage. When they take place should be fairly obvious from context.

* * *

CHAPTER 20

Notes from the field.

-oOo-

"Well, that's entirely useless." I'd got lucky with a thunderstorm only a couple of weeks after I got the potion finished. Shame it turned out to be a total waste of effort. And of a month of enduring everything I ate tasting of mandrake leaf.

"Oh, come on," Sirius says, putting down the polaroid camera and helping me up from the floor, "there's no such thing as a useless animagus. You've just got to get _creative_."

"You reckon? Piss-poor eyesight, stone deaf, and _slow_. Too small to fight anything larger than a vole, too big to pass entirely un-noticed, and if I go outdoors I'm beset by natural predators from arsehole to breakfast-time." It's also not even a mature specimen. Being able to do the magic is a function of maturity of mind, heart and soul, but the transformation itself starts from your actual physical form.

"Always with them negative waves," Sirius opines, being currently in the middle of a war-movie fascination and doing a fair impersonation of Oddball, "You've got venom, at least."

"_Rubbish_ venom. As I said, deadly against voles, no threat to anything larger that isn't already half dead. Does it count as transfigured venom?" Transfigured poison, including the venom of transfigured or conjured animals, doesn't work. Anything introduced to the body - not just food - comes under the relevant Exemption to Gamp's Law (which is _badly formulated_ but apparently we can't overturn a theorist as respected-of-long-standing as Gamp even if half the shit she came out with makes no sense in the context of actual spellcasting). It de-transfigures, making it useless at best and potentially harmful at worst. Or, in the case of venoms and poisons, irritating at best and harmless at worst: you get only the damage it can do in the few seconds it takes to de-transfigure or vanish.

There are foreign theorists who have some excellent ideas about why this is so, but it's hard to get the relevant texts in Britain because they all treat Magical Core Theory as the racist joke it actually is.

Xeno Lovegood travels a lot and is an absolute _darling_ about lending the books he picks up while out of the country. Also, anti-copying charms only work against _magical_ copying and I can afford a photocopier. I'm personally partial to the Morphic Resonance theory, not least because it's so _obviously_ formulated to be as utterly offensive to the world's muggle-haters as humanly possible, down to and including borrowing ideas from an actual muggle biochemist.

Sirius shrugs. "Honestly? No idea. I got quite good marks in transfig theory, but I promptly forgot it all the day after NEWTs. We could get you some mice to bite?"

I give him a Look. "I don't need to know _that _badly." Although I suppose milking my form for some venom and seeing if it turns into human saliva under one of the standard transfiguration-reversal spells would at least prove the general concept.

Sirius is openly sniggering at my disappointment "Speaks well to your character, though. Harmless unless provoked is hardly the worst way to be. Although from a symbolism point of view, the subtlety and cunning of serpents isn't to be sniffed at either. And adders symbolise rebirth and healing if you go back far enough."

I shrug. "Symbolism is all very well, but I'd been hoping for something _useful_."

"_That_," Sirius says, "is what everyone hopes. Apparently a lot of would-be animagi stop right where you are, and from the sound of things I now know _why._ Anyway, even if you're not going any further with this - which you should, by the way, partial transformations can be quite useful, and sometimes just being able to transform into _anything_ is a great help - tradition dictates that you name your form."

_That_ raises my eyebrows. "Huh. You know, when you were telling me about your hijinks at school, I thought the codenames were just teenage foolishness." It _also_ raises the question of what Minerva McGonagall calls hers. There's a pussy joke in there somewhere, but I'm feeling too browned off to go chasing after it.

"Well, they were. Looking back they were horribly obvious and frankly a bit naff. But also tradition. Here's your picture, anything spring to mind?"

I take the polaroid off him and take a good long look. My animagus form is a juvenile _Vipera_ _berus_, one of the most common snakes in the world. Utterly undistinguished in every way. What I have to look forward to is eventually being able to transform into an _adult_ common adder. Be still, my beating heart. "It's not even as if I got the coolness factor of being a melanistic specimen. Well, since it's completely crap and not a _black_ adder, I'm going with Baldrick."

-oOo-

"It sounds a bit borin', Uncle Mal." Dudley, blunt as ever, is frowning at the morning's proposed activity.

"Yeah," Harry adds, "What's it _for?"_

I give the boys a grin. We're all sat on the fireside rug, cross-legged and comfy on cushions. "What it's for is helping you make your brains work better. But it's like every other kind of training, you've got to learn the basics and practise them a lot. Like I keep telling you, there's no getting away from lots and lots of drills. And today's basic thing that you're going to have to drill a lot is simple meditation. Which is a good habit I want you to get into."

I'd asked Sirius how he'd been taught, and he cheerfully admitted that he'd been yelled at and hit until he could maintain the right mental state for occlumency. Tom had got his through being yelled at and hit, albeit in a less formal and directed context. This meant _I_ got it that way too. Although my own early years involved a lot of yelling and getting hit, so there may have been some natural fit to that skill-set. The ability to set one's mind aside comes naturally to people who have been helpless in shitty situations. The challenge, therefore, is teaching the boys to dissociate _without_ traumatising them. Which is where teaching them to alter their own state of consciousness via meditation comes in. Harry will be able to go on to practise proper occlumency, with his magic reinforcing the defence, but Dudley is going to find it a help as well, as the world can be a tad frustrating to those of narrowly-focussed talents.

"The _really_ useful parts come later, but for now being able to meditate is a good way of calming down and refreshing yourself when you have a lot of work to do, or things are difficult or upsetting," I go on, "And if you pay attention for a whole hour, and make a good effort, then we can have fiery orangey pancakes for lunch."

Neither boy can yet pronounce _crêpes suzette_ properly. They do like watching me make them, though. If there's one thing that unites kids it's watching a grown up set food alight and getting dessert at the end of the show.

"Did I hear Fiery Orangey pancakes?" Sirius asks, sticking his head round the door, "I'm joining in, boys!"

-oOo-

"Mal?"

"Yes, Sirius?"

"Is this _you_ in the Quibbler?"

"Ooh, is this month's issue here? Let me see?" Sure enough, I've got my byline on the front cover. Magical printing being what it is, the six column inches they've given me is enough to fit a quite lengthy essay. When you start reading, the rest of what's on the page shuffles politely out of the way.

Sirius interrupts my proud perusal of my own material, "Why are you writing for the Quibbler? Not that I'm _criticising_, you understand, but we do have a lot of projects on."

"Well, it _started_ as an attempt to make contact, the more publications we've got that're willing to print our stuff the better. I just, well, sort of got into correspondence with the Lovegoods and Xenophilius asked me if I'd let him have my thoughts at essay length for publication." There's a secondary motive, of course. If I can wangle an invite I can give Mrs. Lovegood a lengthy lecture on experimental safety. No _guarantee_ it'll save the poor woman's life, but I'd feel an utter heel if I didn't at least make the _effort_. And Xeno is an engaging correspondent and all round good egg, I've learned. Worth cultivating even if we never prevail on him to print so much as a word of the propaganda we're ginning up.

"Thoughts? On what?"

"On how there are useful insights from mundane zoology and investigative techniques in solving magicryptozoological mysteries." I was actually quite pleased with how the piece turned out. Best part: I can almost certainly sell the piece - with a few judicious redactions - to _Fortean Times_, which I'm taking in _this_ universe to get wind of unusual phenomena that the Ministry of Magic miss altogether. On top of it being a reliably good read.

"Spare a chap a lengthy read? I really only bother with the rune puzzles and the conspiracy theories." He's looking at the magazine in my hands with an air of nervous intrigue that has an option on horrified fascination.

"Well, they're looking in the wrong place for the Crumple-horned Snorkack. The type specimen is a partial skeleton - cranium and right forelimb - mounted on a trophy plaque, and because it was found aboard a tramp steamer in Malmö, everyone who's looking for it is looking in Scandinavia."

"And that's wrong, why, exactly?" Sirius is looking interested in spite of himself.

I decide that he has, in fact, Got Me Started, and let drive. "Well, it's pretty obviously a magical species of dwarf brontothere, on morphology alone, and you don't tend to get dwarf species in higher latitudes - completely the other way about, under Bergmann's Rule. Throw in insular dwarfism, and you're _actually_ better off looking on subtropical and tropical islands. Now, the historical range of the brontotheriidae doesn't offer us any help narrowing it down, the wretched things turn up _everywhere _in the fossil record_,_ but I had a chap look up the ship the type specimen was found on and she had been previously registered out of Zanzibar. So, western Indian Ocean. It wasn't fossilized, so there's still hope it isn't extinct, but I'm not personally hopeful. _Lot_ of habitat destruction in that part of the world. Be absolutely _brilliant_ if there's a relic population somewhere, though. Lazarus taxons are always good news."

I give Sirius my biggest, cheeriest grin while he backs away slowly.

-oOo-

"You know, you should have got this charm right by _accident_ before now."

"Yes, thank you for that constructive criticism, Sirius."

Black - he's been annoying me enough today to no longer be on first-name terms with my internal monologue - cocks his head on one side. "You know, _usually_ it's the other way about. Transfiguration hard, charms easy."

"Yes, well. For some reason - I don't even have a good theory - I seem to find it easier to impose my will on the world around me than to seek the intervention of magic itself to bring about the desired result." I actually _do_ have a theory, and it's that charms are designed around baseline humans activating them. Where other sorts of magic are worked directly by the mage, affecting the world, the mind, or what-have you either on the fly or in pre-rehearsed ways, charms are a sort of higher-level magic, in which spells are in a very broad sense 'imprinted' on the world's magic like functions that can be called later. Something about the way I came to be in this universe makes calling on charms to do their thing harder for me than it would be if I was a native. Not _impossible_, just harder. I'm never going to manage the fluid, rapid fire grace with which Sirius, for example, can rattle off charms with scarcely more than a thought.

I've come up with a cover story for if I'm ever pressed on the matter: nearly every charm requires some form of intent, state of mind or summoned-up emotion. The spells in the books generally start with 'having in your heart' or 'clearly intending' or similar wording. I'm going to tell people I just don't focus like that with any ease, but that the visualisation required for transfiguration and conjuring comes naturally. It neatly explains why I have absolutely no trouble with _written_ charms when I turn to rune-work: the extra time and effort involved gives me opportunity to get my mind right.

For now, though, back to trying to make a lockpicking charm work despite the fact that I _know how to pick locks and can just transfigure the entire door into wet fucking cardboard anyway._

I grit my teeth.

-oOo-

"You know, Mister Reynolds, you don't have to pluck _every_ last feather. We do expect there to be some give and take when we contract for these things."

I can't help but chuckle at that. Barchoke, who is one of my client contacts, appears to have picked up some of the human contract lawyer jargon over the years. "I take the view that they shouldn't get the idea that they're allowed feathers _at all_. Stops them taking liberties later, if nothing else."

There are _no_ law firms that consist entirely of Knowledgeable Muggles so until I came along buying stuff (or, rather, mostly leasing, as Goblins don't trust _anything_ that the maker is willing to sell outright) for the goblins involved a great deal of lying, which took up altogether too much of Perenelle Flamel's valuable time. The Goblins have to go through _someone_ when dealing with muggles to avoid tiresome Statute of Secrecy complications, and for obvious reasons they prefer not to use wizards. The bankers they have a stake in would do, but they run in to the same problem: no in-house expertise and a real difficulty retaining outside help and keeping all the lies straight.

Gobslice, who's representing a different group of goblins who _also_ want the water-treatment kit Perenelle has me negotiating for, bursts out with the rasping wheeze that is goblin laughter. "You humans have this word 'stereotype', Mister Reynolds," he says, "and talking with you teaches me why." He goes on to say something in his own language - I've been _warned_ not to call it gobbledegook - that makes Barchoke wince. I like Barchoke. He might harbour racist views about humans, but he has the good grace to do so _secretly_.

Yeah, the downside of dealing with goblins. Much as wizards don't get _their_ culture, they have preconceptions about us surface-dwellers. Outside of minerals and fossil fuels, the hominids who went underground to hide from the glaciers of the Younger Dryas are dirt poor. And unable to live in any kind of dense population, underground food supplies being what they are.

They practise the communism of hard-country tribes: all resources pooled to survive, knowing that your neighbour's welfare is in part a guarantee of your own. It's why they get so touchy about their finished goods being kept beyond the terms on which they're willing to lease them: stealing from a craftsgoblin is stealing from every goblin he might have helped with the work of his or her hands. There's probably more to it - I've heard things that imply that goblin-on-goblin warfare is basically tactical burglary - but I'm not about to add anthropology to the list of things I need to study. I know enough to make educated guesses about what they will and won't stand for in a leasing contract and that will have to do.

The goblins who move to the surface have to get their heads around the every-man-for-himself bullshit that is endemic to the human condition. It's why most of the goblins who leave the caverns and manage to make a go of it are their criminals. And the ones who _don't_ leave the caverns have some very fixed ideas about all humans being grasping, conniving, unprincipled bastards: by their standards, we _are_. The most human-like goblins get exiled, often for quite serious offences.

Meanwhile Gobslice, sniggering little shit that he is, is renewing my sympathy for the jewish colleagues I've had over the years. I'm _sore_ tempted to start mispronouncing his above-ground name.

-oOo-

If you want to enjoy Blackpool, there are two methods, speaking as someone who spent a chunk of his childhood there: have it as your only annual relief from grinding industrial poverty, or be a small child.

Or, apparently, a Pureblood wizard. We're back in the eighties, so the Pleasure Beach is still on the ticket system, and the price of a book of the things is peanuts to Sirius. He, Harry and Dudley are getting in line for their fifth attempt of the day to get whiplash injuries on the Wild Mouse. I remember loving that ride - it's the absolute _best_ of the B-ticket rides - when I was Harry's age, and there aren't height restrictions. (We _could_ get Harry on the likes of Revolution - the only one that has them this early in history - by use of ageing potion, but that would be unfair to Dudley, who can't use it). They won't put height restrictions on the other rides, or even require adult supervision, for some years yet. It's within my own living memory that people would take _dogs_ on: my grandmother's poodle used to _love_ the Flying Machines ride.

Vernon and Petunia are taking their time to get themselves squared away for the new baby girl, who's due any day now. Sirius - suitably disguised - and I have brought the boys for a long weekend: we've climbed the Tower, boated on Stanley Park lake, been to the Zoo, visited the piers (if Neville Longbottom is to be thrown off one of them, it didn't happen while we were there), and we're blowing the whole of Sunday doing the Pleasure Beach and making complete pigs of ourselves on the greasy fried fast food that is the authentic taste of Blackpool.

The only fly in the ointment was the jackass at the Zoo who decided that Sirius and I were capital-T together and thought he had a god-given right to give us shit over it. I was content with giving him enough jedi mind-trick to feel bad about his attitude for a few hours, in the vague hope he'd learn from it. Sirius was offended more by the assumption than the overt homophobia, which is why _his_ response was a jinx of intermittent rectal itching ("because it's worse that way, you can't get used to it") that would last a full lunar cycle.

-oOo-

I hear the kitchen door behind me, which I'm expecting. The voice I hear, not so much. "Oh, sorry. You must be the housemate Sirius told me about?"

I turn away from where I have my wand and a thermocouple trained on the teapot. Sirius _had_ warned me via the time-honoured method of note under the door that he had company over - he's been showing himself undisguised in a few locations and _of course_ he thought fit to involve what is _probably_ an innocent bystander, I am going to have a _word_ with that boy. Fortunately, silencing charms being what they are, I wasn't disturbed by him and his guest knocking boots last night. His note _did_ warn me to take ageing potion and transfigure my hair close-cropped and blond before getting dressed this morning, though. Adult Mal only looks _related_ to Kid Mal, not like a grown-up version of him. "That'd be me, yes. I'm fairly sure we haven't met, I feel sure I'd have remembered. I'm Mal. How do you do, Ms. -" I trail off the question.

"Charity, Charity Southworth." Her accent is a breath of home, although I decide not to ask if she's one of the Samlesbury Southworths, as that's tantamount to asking if she had an ancestor who stood trial for cannibalism. Even though she was acquitted, it's too awkward a topic for a first meeting. Charity herself is a shortish, curvy, blue-eyed dark brunette with a face that looks made for smiling or sarcasm alike. She's of a type that I'm familiar enough with - most parts of the world have a repertoire of Standard Types and she's of one common to most of northern England and southern Scotland - to have dated more than one. She's barefoot and wearing one of Sirius's shirts as a short dress in best not-ready-for-the-walk-of-shame-yet style, and has her hair up in a sort of bun thing that's pinned in place with a couple of the imitation-wand wooden hairpins that a lot of witches favour.

"Call me Mal, everyone does," I offer in return, "and forgive me not being more formal about things. Unlike Sirius, I'm a morning person, been up a few hours already, and I need to refill on tea. There'll be a cup going if you want one, and chorley cakes in the breadbin there if you want a taste of home with it. Plenty of other sorts of cake in there too, Sirius stocked up for the sake of his sweet tooth. Had to use extension charms to fit everything in, he'll be like the back end of a bus if he keeps it up." I'm fighting down the urge to lapse into dialect with Ms. Southworth. Adult Mal is supposed to have been raised abroad, or so runs the legend I've built around Diagon Alley over the last year and a bit. Nattering away in my native dialect would erode my cover.

"What are you doing to that teapot?" she asks, taking a seat at the kitchen table.

"Being a complete nerd, if I'm honest. Tea snobbery, techno-sorcery style. Warming the pot before I brew up, I'm aiming for an exact temperature rather than just swilling the pot out with boiling water and hoping for the best." I tap the notebook I've got next to the tea-caddy. "I keep notes, recording the effect of different variations."

She nods. "You will, of course, be publishing once you've figured out the perfect cuppa?" she says, mock-serious. She's play-acting the 'mock' part, of course. We're both _deadly_ serious. Tea is _important_.

I draw myself up in theatrical affront. "Miss, I am a man of _science_. Of _course_ I will publish. If nothing else, being able to make a good brew with the local water will be a breakthrough for the ages."

"You're on the muggle supply here? Down south? Yuck. That's about half of why I put up with flooing to work every morning. Can't beat the water back home in Ramsbottom."

"Been there, and while I don't think it _can't_ be beat I will allow that it _is_ good stuff."

"Long as you're not using conjured water, then," she says, with an exaggerated sneer at the very idea.

As well she should: the water-conjuring charm (it isn't conjured water, it's real water gathered from whatever sources are nearby) gets you the equivalent of distilled, de-ionised water, with all its attendant flatness of taste. I shake my head firmly. "No. Although there _are_ methods for rendering it suitable to use, that's more faffing about than even _I_ am willing to put up with."

She laughs aloud at that. "A wizard? _Not_ faffing about? Well, I'll go to't foot of our stairs. I've seen _everything_ now."

"Oh, I do plenty of faffing about. Just not when it comes to tea. Besides, I'm not a wizard."

"You've got a wand," she quite reasonably points out.

"Well, yes, very handy for the magic, is a wand. Glad I bought one. And since I'm doing magic I'm very definitely operating in my capacity as a _magus_, or _mage_ to use the anglicised version. However, if you wanted to introduce me in company, you'd tell people I was an alchemist. It's more accurate, and I don't like the word 'wizard'" The kettle comes to the boil at this point and I get the brew going while she digests that one. I've been winding Sirius up with this for _weeks_, time to try it on a member of the general public.

"You don't like the word? Other than because you're really an alchemist?"

"Truly, I don't. Time was, we had a perfectly good word for people who do magic, _wicc_, and you stuck the masculine or feminine ending on as suited your purpose. _Wicce_ or _wicca_. There was a neuter ending too, not that I can recall what it was off hand, and most people would take offence anyway. Anyway, that's where we get the modern word 'witch'. Although only for ladies nowadays, of course. Then along come the Normans with their strange and continental ideas about _everything_ and the boys don't want to share a word with a lot of rotten girls. Might get girl-germs! Can't have that!" I wave a finger in emphasis.

Charity finds this highly amusing, and is giggling as I put the teapot and a mug in front of her. I use the business of arranging the tea service to cover a look into her eyes and a spot of legilimency that tells me she's exactly what she appears to be: Sirius's date from last night, renewing an acquaintance from when they were both at Hogwarts and being deliciously naughty by coming home with him. If she's anything more sinister, it's hidden better than I can uncover without going overt on the poor girl.

"As I was saying," I carry on, with some off-hand wand-work to select a plate of cakes and buns and float them over to the table, "they decided on the worst possible choice. Wizard."

"What's wrong with it?" Charity asks, raising my opinion of Sirius's taste in women by not sugaring her tea.

"The ending. Think about it. Drunkard. Bastard. Dotard. Coward. Dastard, although that one only survives as an adjective. Dullard. _They're all insults_. There was a point, somewhere in the history of the english language, when male magic-users made themselves really unpopular. Absolute stinkards, in fact."

"Then there's you, honking like a bustard," Sirius chimes in as he comes in to the kitchen, adjusting himself in the crotch of his jeans as he does so.

"Which you only heard because you were eavesdropping like a _mouchard_," I reply. "Tea's just brewed, Charity's already introduced herself, I was just about to ask her to explain what happened to make her taste in men so dreadful."

"Strong drink," Charity avers, raising her mug to the whole idea of drunken lowered standards.

"True," Sirius says, lifting the teapot, "if it wasn't for alcohol, I'd have to become a musician to get dates. I'm just _that_ awful." Sirius is selling himself short. He was raised by a family that considered the ability to play at least _something_ as part of being a well-rounded mage, so he's a dab hand at the harpsichord. Or anything with a keyboard, really, which is why he now has a whole rack of keyboards and synthesisers and enjoys re-arranging baroque standards for Humourous Chicken Noises and Comedy Flatulence effects.

"In short, a _wizard_," I say, "who is a considerable _laggard_ in getting up." Which is true: it's nearly ten. Which I would have regarded as no great lie-in back in the day, but apparently the mix of James and Lily constitutes Morning People Genes.

"He," Sirius tells Charity with a firmly-pointed accusatory finger in my general direction, "has been annoying me with this for weeks. The only mercy is that it brought temporary respite from all the accursed _puns_."

"He brought it on himself. He started with puns on his name, of all things, and learned that old age and experience will _always_ defeat youth and enthusiasm."

"Old age?" Charity looks puzzled for a moment, and then gives me a Look, "you mean you _are_ an alchemist? Immortal? How old are you _really?"_

"Older than I look, but not actually outside a normal human lifespan yet," I say. Even counting all the life-experience I absorbed from Tom. Even if I took the lot and became a Tom-Mal hybrid, that still only adds up to one hundred and six-ish, which would be a decent age but not outrageous for a man born when and where I was. It makes me a year or so 'younger' than Dumbledore, which I intend to twit him with as opportunity allows.

"But immortal, though, yes?"

"Bit of a silly claim when I could reach this age without magical assistance," I tell her, "I think the record for muggles is a hundred and something-teen if you stick only to the verifiable ones, and I'm not that old yet. And no, not immortal. I can die, after all. I'm just good enough at what I do that age and disease aren't a factor. Although, as I understand it, making it to one's sixth century is generally more by good luck than good management."

"And if you _do_ get that old?" Sirius is curious too.

"You've met Perenelle Flamel. You think anything can kill _her?"_

"Point. I've never seen her raise her voice or have a cross word for anyone. But you can just _tell_ even the devil himself wouldn't dare get on her bad side."

Charity's eyes have gone wide. "So you have a philosopher's stone."

"Nope," I tell her, "they're a bit of a red herring, those. Used to be a test of skill, made _much_ easier with modern methods. If you could make a Stone with medieval lab gear, you were fit to work unsupervised. Here's the thing, though: how old was Armando Dippet when he died?"

"Uh, very? He retired from Hogwarts when my dad was there, and he was three hundred and something, I forget."

"Can't say I know precisely myself," I tell her, "but he wasn't an alchemist. He was doing unconsciously what a lot of magicals do: controlling his own ageing with his magic. To put it in alchemist terms, he was controlling and reversing the entropy of his own body. And reversing and controlling entropy is a very major part of what magic _does_, so it's no great stretch to do it to yourself. There are a lot of ways to do it, to the point that there are several recognised classes of method. You just have to learn to do it consistently, over and over again, without mistakes. Stop doing it, or make a mistake bad enough, and you age and die like any other creature. If you want a tip, though, avoid the dark arts. Maleficium damages your mind, makes you hate yourself and your magic hate _you_, so you can end up shortening your lifespan. Which is why a lot of your dark sorcerors go in for horrible life-extending and death-defying magic to keep them alive when they've turned their own magic against themselves. Otherwise they'd die younger than even muggles manage."

_That_ provokes a long silence. Pretty heavy stuff for the breakfast-table, but in all fairness she _did_ ask.

"So," says Sirius, "these three wizards walk into a bar, right…"

-oOo-

"Well, Sirius knew your mum and dad best, Harry, perhaps he can take this one."

"Take what one?" Sirius has come through to see who was at the door. It's Harry, who has come straight here instead of home from school because he needs help with homework.

"We were doing about families and names at school and Miss Minshull said Harry was short for Henry or Harold and I didn't know which, and Dudley's getting all about mum's side from _his _mum because mum was Aunt Petunia's sister and we're going to share that bit but I reckoned you'd know about dad, Uncle Sirius, and I thought Mal might know how to look stuff up because Miss Minshull said there were jenny-logical researchers who looked up stuff about families -"

"Genealogical, Harry," I say, before he gets into full small-child spate, "and I get the picture. We'll see what Sirius can remember, and we'll figure out what we can look up and how to explain your magical family at school where you can't mention magic."

"And, Harry?" Sirius puts in, "You're Harry for _both_ Henry _and_ Harold. Harold was your mother's father, your granddad, and there was a famous Henry Potter who was your great grandfather. You're named for both of those men, who were both Harry to their friends."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Mal getting a crap animagus form: Far too many fic writers assume that it's a magic that leads to guaranteed awesome, when out of the five animagi we see in the books, two are definitely slightly rubbish and hardly any use at all, one is slightly awful mitigated by usefulness, and the other two are basically mundane animals.

The muggle biochemist mentioned is Rupert Sheldrake. Who actually _was_ a biochemist, before he turned to formulating and propagating some decidedly odd but _thoroughly_ entertaining ideas in the field of magical theory. (No, really.)

Magical Cores are one of those fanon things that have absolutely no support in the books. I'm using them in this story as a pureblood supremacist thing that emphasises what special snowflakes wizards and witches are at the price of being reductionist about magic. (Which "magical cores" _are._) Every pernicious ideology has to have its drivel pseudoscience, after all - Lysenkoism, Rassenlehre, Supply-Side Economics - and in _this_ fic magical core theory fills that niche.

Fortean Times: real publication, look it up. It and _Private Eye_ are obvious candidates for the real-world inspiration of the Quibbler. At the extremely minor risk of doxxing myself, I have actually been published in both. Mal, as my SI, lets me complete the set.

As for the Crumple-horned Snorkack being a magical member of the Brontotheriidae family? Completely my own invention: the horns on Brontothere snouts _are_ often quite crumpled-looking. Bergmann's rule, insular dwarfism and applying real zoological insights to cryptozoology are all real things.

The Younger Dryas is the last period of glaciation that affected the British Isles. The marks it left can still be seen all over the landscape. Look it up if you're interested in geology.

Barchoke the goblin is a fanon character who first appears - I believe - in Robst's 'Harry Crow' (which is a fun read, as Robst's stuff tends to be when he's on his pace, consider this your fanfic recommendation for this chapter although he overdoes the Harmony in my view) and has been used by a number of other authors since.

As for Gobslice's attitude: many people assumed that as Nasty Bankers the goblins of the books were a stand-in for jews, which I found baffling. None of the nasty, grasping, duplicitous bankers I met in the years I worked in the City of London - including some _appalling_ specimens - was jewish. (None of the bankers _at all_ that I can recall. Plenty of jewish _lawyers_, mind, including some very fondly-remembered colleagues) It therefore amused me to turn things around a bit.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach:old-fashioned - founded 1896! - amusement park. Amazing place if you're a kid, and still has rides from its opening years in operation, as well as more modern ones. The Wild Mouse, dating from the 1950s, only got taken down in 2017.

Dogs on rides: yes, really. There's a photo of me as a very small boy on one of, if not _the_ last of Hiram Maxim's Captive Flying Machine rides, (and yes, _that_ Hiram Maxim) holding the dog's lead. The seventies were a more free-and-easy time. And 1904, when that ride was built, was even more so.

The Samlesbury Southworths were one of the families caught up in the Lancashire Witch-trials of 1612. The allegations against them were of the murder and cannibalism of a small child (animagery and various magical harrassments were also led in evidence, but weren't actually illegal at the time, no really). Their family seat, Samlesbury Hall, is both preserved as a historical attraction and a very nice venue for wedding receptions and the like. I've been there a few times. (The Southworths also have a canonized saint: one of them got gruesomely martyred for trying to convert the English back to catholicism.) Chorley, home of the eponymous cake, is about ten minutes' drive from Samlesbury.

The discussion about local water: you get potable water out of the taps wherever you go in Britain, something not even privatisation could fuck up. It does, however, taste very different from place to place. As for the tea-making, Mal is somewhat worse than I am about this, but then he has time and resources I don't. I would totally behave like that if I could.

Wizard lifespans: the Black Family Tree that JKR put out is complete bollocks on its face and contradicts stuff she put in the books, but she _does_ have most of this family of Dark Wizards dying at quite young ages for wizards and witches. I've included an explanation for the phenomenon… enjoy!

Finally: Harry's name. Harry is the diminutive for Henry or Harold. Harrison died out entirely in Britain other than as a surname until the mid 90s (and at that I only know one, the child of my neighbours at the time). As for the fanon 'Hadrian', oh dear me no. Even on the wizarding side people would exclaim 'You named your baby after the _WALL?_'


	21. Bodyguard of Lies

DISCLAIMER: Do all of JKR's attempts at metaphor invariably end up being metaphors for something other than her obvious intent? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

A few days late, but, well … *gestures vaguely at more-or-less everything*

* * *

CHAPTER 21

"Well, Mr. Lupin, I'm pleased to tell you that subject to a couple of formalities, you've got the job."

Lupin looks baffled. As well he might. After giving Sirius a few minutes to catch up with his old friend, I've come in, sat down, and dropped that bombshell. With Lupin's flabber suitably gasted, I take a moment to study the man who made such an abysmal show of himself in the books. On finally meeting my first (known) werewolf, I'm mildly disappointed. I mean, if I was going to guess that Remus Lupin was a were-anything on the impression he gives, I'd go for something a bit less puissant "than a wolf. Werewhippet, maybe? If I wanted to give someone an example of 'nervous and diffident' I'd introduce them to this chap. He's somewhat rangy, sandy-haired, with narrow features and a bookish air about him: the moustache is present, but needs work. He's the sort of man who gives the impression of wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows even when he isn't.

He's actually tolerably well dressed. Sirius told him we dressed muggle in this house, and in muggle kit he doesn't have the threadbare out-at-elbows look he's described with in the books. Makes sense: it is _markedly_ cheaper to dress oneself in muggle shops than in Diagon Alley, where the price for ordinary working robes start at the rough equivalent of a decent three-piece suit from an out-of-town tailor, so wizards of modest means have to make do with second hand and the limited ability of repair charms to keep up with wear and tear. Transfigured clothing is a _remarkably_ bad idea, as any transfiguration in close contact with a living being will degrade unpredictably. Not as fast as anything consumed _into_ the body, but just as surely. Trousers that revert to being a houseplant while they're wrapped about your nethers? Not a good look.

Lupin has gone with a slacks-and-blazer combo, Marks & Spencer by the looks. Whatever he's doing for ready money, it's paying well enough that he didn't have to settle for a Topman first-court-appearance special. This is a good thing, as I'm not sure I'd be able to fight down the trained-in urge to give him a lecture on his right to bail and how not to be in contempt of court.

After a minute of me giving him the once-over, he still looks baffled. Sirius, less baffled-looking, but still surprised at my opening remarks, turns to me. "You know, Mal, I don't have a _lot_ of experience in the whole hiring employees thing, but aren't you supposed to tell the successful applicant he's won at the _end_ of the interview?"

"If we had more than one candidate, yes," I tell him, "but look at it this way: we need someone who's literate, able to follow basic instructions and learn as he goes. You know and vouch for Mr. Lupin here, and since we're trying to keep our various projects confidential, or at least somewhat low-key, we can't very well advertise for competitors. As I see it, we can get a lot of perfectly good and useful work out of him without him needing any particular skill, and if he turns out to _have_ particular skills, well, we exclaim in delight and give him a raise. The other reason for having interviews is to establish that one can get on with the candidate in a work environment, establishing whether the fellow's face fits and so forth. You roomed with him for seven years, so we know _you _can. And I have long, bitter experience in putting up with irritating co-workers so I frankly don't give a shit, so long as he remembers his turn to make the brews and doesn't cook fish in the microwave. Beyond that, he's hardly likely to be more of a pain in the arse than I am, now, is he?"

Sirius nods, "Point." Turning to Lupin - who is all but cross-eyed with blatant confusion, and if I had to guess in mortal dread of Being Asked Questions Later - he says, "If you're feeling the need to run screaming back to Yorkshire, Moony, now's your chance."

After a moment of his open-mouthed disbelief shifting to a brief frown and then a wry smile, Lupin guffaws. "When you said to come with an open mind," he says once he's got himself under control, "you weren't kidding, were you Siri?" While he was chatting with Sirius a touch of welsh got through what sounds like years of careful elocution, and it comes through much more strongly when he's amused.

"_Moi_? _Kidding?" _Sirius responds, and then, more seriously, "Mal can be a bit offsetting at first, but he's usually on the right track."

"So what is the job, then?" Lupin asks, which I'm glad of, since it lets me take the question. I rather want to be sure of Lupin's willingness to keep our confidences before I get down to brass tacks, and Sirius was on track to blurt things out. Not a character flaw, just not trained in the basic skills of not giving the game away by accident.

"Well," I say, setting down my teacup - we're interviewing in our living room in the Wisteria Walk house, which we've been busily making bigger on the inside (outside the bits the non-magicals can see, of course) as part of my ongoing program of getting better at wand-work - "assuming you don't bring anything else to the job than the absolute basics, it's reading, collating and categorising texts, all from non-magical sources. If you're up to the task of helping with the subsequent analysis, so much the better, but essentially I want you to do the boring part of the job so I don't have to. Which is why it's a paying position, of course. If the job was at all fun, I'd be keeping it for myself." I favour him with a smile.

Lupin, meanwhile, is back to his default nervous disposition. "Ah, well - that is to say, um - yes. It sounds like something I could do, yes." I can see why this chap was sorted into Gryffindor. He's so nervous just getting out of bed of a morning is a monumental act of courage.

I decide to help him along a bit. "Sirius tells me you had a fair work ethic at school?"

"Well," he says, relaxing a bit. School seems to be, if not a comfortable topic, one that doesn't make him anxious. Useful to know. "It was more by comparison to this reprobate, really. I believed in making the most of my education, and getting essays and so forth done on time, really."

I nod. "All I really needed to hear. So long as I can give you a task and the standards I expect I can expect you to crack on. Did Sirius mention that you're getting paid on the muggle side of things? Any experience with that?"

"Well, I've been working as a barman whenever I've been back in the country. Part-time. Easy work, since I can talk to the pub's elf and the ghosts where the muggle staff can't."

My ears prick up at that. Haunted pub? There's a reasonable chance I've visited it. "Which pub?"

"Oh, little place off the beaten track, just outside Haworth. Called the Silent Inn, of all places."

I _do_ know it, although the cook who made it a worthwhile place to stop for lunch on trips across the Pennines hasn't, I suspect, been born yet. "I'm honestly surprised that place is still going," I say, frantically trying to remember the history page they'd had on their website, "Remind me, is that the one where one of the ghosts is a crazy cat lady?" The landlord's wife, thirty years in the future, found the whole story both fascinating and amusing.

"Well, I wouldn't say Abigail is crazy. But very fixated on anything feline, yes. How she got her cats to stay on as ghosts with her she won't say, but she managed somehow."

"Wait, ghost _cats?"_ Sirius is chuckling over that, "that's not supposed to be possible."

"That's what I said, when I saw them," Lupin is shaking his head in amusement, "but the place is absolutely crawling with them, I didn't try to count but I shouldn't wonder there's a dozen or so."

"I found it a rather good restaurant," I remark, not troubling to drop any hints about _when_ I ate there last, "and there are definitely such things as spirit dogs the length and breadth of Europe so I'm not surprised to learn of spectral moggies. Although it's odd they're so rare, you'd think with nine lives they'd leave _more_ ghosts, not fewer."

Sirius crumples up a sheet of notepaper to throw at me in chastisement. "Seriously, though, how much notice do you have to give?"

"Well, not much. I just sort of fill in now and then, since I can't maintain a regular schedule, what with one thing and another."

"Who told you that?" I ask, leaving the circumlocution around the whole 'furry little problem' for the moment.

"Well, nobody told me as such, it's just sort of accepted that you can't keep a job if you're constantly taking time off."

I snort. "That may be the frankly barbaric practice of the magical world, but the muggle side of things has employment rights. Not enshrined in law for a part-time casual like yourself, but definitely accepted practise." Britain's unions are still relatively strong here in the 80s, so employers tread relatively carefully even when the law allows them at least some shenanigans, and habits formed before the time of three million unemployed have yet to fade. "If you'd got a full time job somewhere, statutory sick pay and usually around twenty days of paid time off a year are about standard."

"What job could I get, though?" Lupin is frowning.

I shrug. "Pretty much any trade, and quite a lot of office jobs have entry-level positions that require qualifications you could get without too much fuss. I dare say if you managed NEWT-level Arithmancy, a passing CSE in maths wouldn't even require much revision. And seven years of essay-writing would let you bullshit your way through English and Literature. You don't even need _that_ to start as a shop assistant."

Lupin just looks at me blankly. Off to my side I can just make out Sirius rolling his eyes. I mean, I've _tried_ not to be annoying when I start ranting about wizards needing to stop assuming that a wizard's education lets you do anything without further training.

"Or is it that you think working for a muggle is beneath a wizard, is that it?" I say it sweetly, with as saccharine a smile as I can manage. A spoonful of sugar, after all, helps the pisstaking go down.

"Well, no, that's not it - well, you see -"

"Or is it that Hogwarts educates you to be a wizard and nothing else, and indoctrinates you with the idea that that is the only thing _worth_ being?" Still with the Stepford Smile. I'm rather enjoying the effect it's having on Lupin, he's alternating between confusion and affront quite amusingly.

In the end it's Sirius's mugging that gives the game away. I mean, those are valid points, I just don't believe in being too harsh on the victims when there's a perfectly good perpetrator to damn the eyes of, so I was never going to try and suggest he was responsible for his own miseducation. Lupin harrumphs. "Yes, well. I suppose I do have some large areas of ignorance, especially about the options I apparently had, but then I didn't take muggle studies. "

"Wouldn't have helped. I read the textbook they're using. It's all horseshit, out of date, or out of date horseshit. I suspect they're only getting away with teaching that course because nobody ever tries to use it in the real world." I'm being slightly unfair: the description of the government of the United Kingdom is pretty accurate. It should be, it's cribbed word-for-word from Dicey's Introduction to the Study of Constitutional Law. As for the rest of it, as far as I can tell it should have got more things right by sheer _accident_ than it actually managed. The author wasn't just ignorant, she was ignorant and _unlucky_.

"He's right," Sirius says, "I mean, you know I only took it to annoy my mother, but you must have heard Mary MacDonald when she got going?"

Lupin chuckles. "She could be rather forceful, yes. And to be honest I've never felt the lack of that particular OWL when I've been out and about among the muggles, so she probably had a point. Although, it seems, I have a lot to learn."

"Getting back to the point," I say, well aware how easy it is to ramble off into reminiscence, "the magical economy, from all I've seen, is a complete nonsense and their approach to employment law is frankly offensive. They're still calling it the law of Master and Servant, and the less said about their approach to workers' rights the better. Even the _Americans_ do better. Very much a don't-get-me-started topic. So I've ginned up an actual written contract - the only magically-binding bit is going to be the confidentiality clause - and I'm proposing to pay you twelve thousand a year in real money, which after tax and National Insurance will buy you a bit over two thousand galleons. Duties will be general office work and any reasonable management instruction on top of that, and if you feel up to trusting our expansion spells, there are guest rooms in the attic you can have for no more than the tax it'll cost you on the benefit." I'm guessing that Lupin is actually squatting somewhere: while there aren't laws against doing business with werewolves, the prejudice is strong stuff and without a presence and a regular income in the muggle world he'd find it hard to rent there. The payroll agency I'll be paying to handle his finances will sort him out with a National Insurance number and I'm going to gently educate him in not living in wizarding poverty when there are alternatives. Dumbledore isn't the only one who can play the induced pathetic gratitude gambit, after all.

"Magically binding confidentiality?" Lupin has picked up the document I've slid across the coffee table at him, and seems fascinated by the fact that most of it is on paper, but the schedule clipped to the back is on parchment.

"Some of what I'll have you doing is supporting my work in the alchemist community. _Lot_ of financial services and legal work, and confidentiality is standard in that sort of work. I need to be able to say that my support staff won't leak, you understand." Once I'd got my head around how to make a contract magically binding - which had me grateful for the first time ever that my university made study of Roman Law mandatory with its law degrees, because the model one uses is decidedly _not_ any kind of modern theory of contract - it was easy to adapt an NDA from the Encyclopedia of Forms and Precedents and include it as a schedule to Lupin's Contract of Employment. On parchment, because paper doesn't take magic terribly well: parchment is a single piece of animal skin, a unitary object. Paper is laid fibre from multiple trees, a composite object and as such tricky to get predictable results out of when you enchant it. The more you know, et cetera.

Lupin nods. He's bought the obvious explanation: it's not like I'm going to tell him he'll be basically working as an intelligence analyst for the war effort before he's signed the non-disclosure part of his contract. Of course, my motivation is _considerably_ more focussed on Lupin being Dumbledore's _clangingly_ obvious plant: I want control over what information goes back to the old duffer. Things outside Lupin's job, like me teaching Harry to speak French? Yeah, I _want_ Dumbledore to know that. It's why I kind of want him living on the premises: it'll let me stage and plant and misinform to my twisted little heart's content.

Keeping Dumbledore in the dark and fed on horseshit is going to keep him from getting in the way of winning the war. I have a low opinion of the pretence of long-range plans, and a positively _unprintable_ one when it comes to Dumbledore's essays in the art. After all, Dumbledore's plan in the books was entirely terrible, poorly executed, and only worked by the merest chance. _Harry's_ part in the plan wasn't just misconceived - Dumbledore needed to run his understanding of what the word _sacrifice_ means past a qualified theologian, if nothing else - it was flat out immoral. So immoral even _Snape_ baulked at it.

While I've been musing, Lupin has been reading. "Twenty days?"

"Not including Statutory Public Holidays, yes. Of which there are seven a year. And so we're clear, the time off you need for recovery after full moons is sick leave, not holiday. Which is on full pay, because the paperwork for Statutory Sick Pay is entirely tiresome, even after dumping most of it on the payroll agency I'm using."

Lupin looks at me dumbly. And then, "Sirius, did you tell him?" in an accusing tone.

"I didn't. Mal's some sort of seer, as I understand it. There's this whole thing about him having been outside mortal time or some such, I confess I don't really understand it, but there you go. Since it was how he knew where to send Dumbledore to catch the rat, I'm not arguing with it."

I lean back in my chair with a beatific smile. The literature on divination and seers is diverse, full of contradictions and usually sensationalised to buggery. People _do_ believe that they're an actual Thing - my own studies haven't got anywhere yet, as it happens, so I'm keeping an open mind - so I've decided on a nebulous claim to being a seer as being a fruitful approach to getting away with utter bollocks on a regular basis. Like all good lines of boffo, it's best maintained by a knowing, smiling silence.

After a long pause to let Lupin recover his wits, I forestall the - I suspect - imminent protestations of gratitude about my lack of prejudice. "I've not been able to get hold of the recipe for the Wolfsbane Potion, alas. Or, at least, not yet. The Ministry has made efforts to suppress it, since they don't want the likes of Greyback able to keep their thinking minds during full moons. Which is entirely sensible, if hugely inconvenient."

"I actually have it," Lupin says, in a small voice, "I just mostly can't afford to make it. It works out to about ten galleons a month, and -"

I give him a Look. "Fifty quid, at treaty exchange rates. If you'd actually taken some initiative vis a vis working on the muggle economy, that would be a couple of days' wages a month even in an entry-level job. Nothing compared to what I'll be paying you. And we can probably save some money on the botanicals, there's a squib who's a keen gardener hereabouts who could probably help." And if my theory about Petunia's magic is right, will probably do quite well at it. "Also, consider 'ensuring you're properly confined during the full moon' your first reasonable management instruction. As communicable diseases go it's eminently manageable, after all."

Shaking his head in disbelief - the most entirely basic terms and conditions of employment seem generous beyond measure to a man used to trying to scrape a living in the wizarding world - Lupin signs the contract without further comment.

It's after I've taken him through the intelligence exercise with the non-magical news reports that we get a problem.

"This is going to be of enormous use if we ever have to reform the Order of the Phoenix."

"Not going to happen," Sirius barks out.

"What, reform of the order? Or - surely you're not going to keep this to yourselves?"

I butt in, because Sirius has grown a lot saltier about Dumbledore over the last few months. Azkaban has left him with a tendency to _ruminate_. "The problem with the Order is the leadership. The first time I met Dumbledore I caught him in the act of mugglebaiting, and that was while I was busy cleaning up the mess left by his abduction and neglect of a child, making himself complicit in embezzlement and putting children at risk through the ill-advised use of mind-control magic. Man's high-handed, ignorant, and a closet anti-muggle bigot, judging purely from his actions. And from what I heard, his leadership in the last go-round required a straight-up miracle to avoid defeat. And then he went on to lose the peace: look who's in charge right now - the very people who were supporting the side that supposedly lost. I'm told he's a remarkably good schoolteacher, so perhaps he should stick to that? He doesn't seem inclined to educate himself to properly discharge the other roles he's taken on."

Lupin's incoherent spluttering rings a few changes on the theme of "But Dumbledore -!"

"Yes, I know, powerful wizard, very learned, defeated Grindelwald. I get it: he has a lot of accomplishments. Doesn't mean he can't mess up, and I personally don't want myself or anyone I care about involved when he does, because he does it on a scale that beggars belief. I've _foreseen_ the mess he's going to make of things if we let him have his head. It's a plan that ends up requiring _two_ suicides to work, and even then depends on the enemy being stupid at _multiple_ critical moments." I don't want to say too much more, as that magically-binding NDA only covers material arising in the course of his work. I offer up a silent prayer that Sirius actually thinks before he talks.

"Look at it this way, Moony," Sirius says, while I hope nobody notices I'm holding my breath, "he completely neglected his duty as a leader to see to the welfare of his people, even when all he had to do was his duty as an officer of the Wizengamot to see justice done. Five years in Azkaban. And yes, I'm bitter, but I think I have a right to be, don't you? And even if I had it in me to forgive him, which I may yet, I'm not volunteering for more of the same. I'm willing to be the bigger man, I'll certainly try, but I'll be damned before I'll be a complete _idiot_."

I let out the breath I'd been holding. Before Sirius gets up steam for a rant in which he _will_ say something that will cause problems, I try for a subject change, "There's also the fact that Dumbledore seems to have hold of the idea that if you kill the enemy leader you've won. He's ignoring the fact that Riddle -"

"Who?"

"Voldemort's real name. Not important, but nobody winces when you call him by his real name. As I was say, he's ignoring the fact that Riddle is a symptom. He didn't bring about the whole blood purity nonsense _ex nihilo_, it was a movement three hundred years in the building and bluntly, if it hadn't been him some other bugger would've gathered that crowd together and organised them. We should be thankful that Riddle was sufficiently mentally ill that he sabotaged himself in several critical ways, not least of which was the neglect of any form of study that didn't centre on murder, torture and enslavement. A _competent_ Dark Lord would have won with hardly a fight, given Riddle's resources." I'm pretty sure that I could probably do it: while 'kick open the door and let the whole rotten edifice collapse' is, as a motto, a byword for overconfidence, I have grown increasingly convinced that where Wizarding Britain is concerned, it's _almost _ true. The edifice needs a little more carefully-guided rot to be quite ready, is all. That and a decent scheme for the post-collapse nation-building, I don't want to be stuck with the job of governing the clowns afterward.

Lupin's looking more than a little grumpy about this. He has good personal reason to hold Dumbledore in high regard, even if we might look askance at Dumbledore's motives for educating a werewolf in defiance of widespread prejudice.

"Look at it this way," I go on, "We're doing the groundwork for an attempt to head the next war off entirely by winning it before the other side starts fighting, maybe even changing social conditions enough that there's no reason for it to be fought at all. Even if that doesn't work, we'll be in a good position to ensure that we're not dying for the cause but making the other fellow die for his. Meanwhile, Dumbledore's only actual prep work consists of having a double agent on the strength - a double agent he has publicly burned, by the way, so what use he expects to get out of him I have no idea."

Lupin sighs. "If that's your experience of the man, I suppose I can grin and bear it. I think you're being unfair to him, though, I mean, child abduction? How does a rumour like that get started?"

I cast my eyes unto the heavens before replying. _Give me fuckin' strength_. "Well, in this case, it isn't a rumour, it's the accurate characterisation of removing a child without lawful authority and placing him in a foster home without any form of consent from the prospective foster-parents. That they were, as far as he knew at the time, muggles makes the mind-altering enchantments he placed on their home technically mugglebaiting into the bargain. Took me the best part of a year to undo enough of the psychological damage that they could function as half-way decent parents."

Sirius butts in, "The kid we're talking about is Harry, Moony. Dumbledore fucked those poor muggles up so badly they were mistreating him. And his foster-brother. Nice kids, you'll like them." I can hear a hint of reproach in Sirius' tone for that last bit, and I'm glad that's as far as he takes it. I've warned Sirius not to give Lupin any shit about not checking in on Harry. While it's definitely poor form on his part, it'd be worse form on our part to pressure him over it and make him get all defensive. While I don't approve of Lupin's inaction, I _do_ understand that a man under that freight of grief, coming after a lifetime of monthly trauma, might not be entirely capable of being his best self. As it is, there's a definite pained expression on his face. He bloody _knows_ he could have involved himself in Harry's life. If I'm reading the guilt aright, it's probably why he was so diffident about admitting to Harry that he even _knew_ James Pottter, and only admitted being the man's friend under intense pressure. Guilt can make even the strongest shy away from doing the right thing, and of course that generates _more_ guilt. Nasty, and piling on won't help him break the vicious cycle.

I go for a summation that'll bring this session of convincing Lupin away from the Cult of Dumbledore to a close, "The point we're driving at here, Lupin, is that while Dumbledore has some shining accomplishments, they're long in the past. The more recent showing he's made? Involving him would be a bit like bringing your accordion along on a deer hunt."

It's a measure of how flustered Lupin's getting that his only response is a quiet "But I don't _own_ an accordion."

Sirius cracks up.

Later, while Lupin is off for one last night in Yorkshire - gathering up his things, letting the landlord of the Silent Inn know he's off again, and probably packing in a side trip to Hogwarts to debrief to Dumbledore - Sirius is clearly in a ruminative mood. "On the one hand, I do want to give Remus a lot more grief over the way he's behaved. On the other, I get what you're saying about the problems he had. God knows I'm willing to forgive him, and maybe a little stability and prosperity will give him the chance to be the man I'm sure he can be. One question, though, since you're so sure he'll be reporting to Dumbledore, why do you want him around at all, if we're not involving the old boy any more than we can help?"

"Same reason Riddle will let Snape back in when the time comes. Accepting and managing the spy you know about is just common sense," which conclusion I'm admittedly basing on half-remembered history books from the future time when MI5's wartime activities were declassified, "and I don't want to give Dumbledore any motivation to be less crap at espionage. He'll use any skills he acquires against us."

"Sure about that? I'm completely alongside doubting the man's competence, but you're suggesting he's left the side of the angels entirely."

I snort in amusement. Evil Dumbledore was a popular fanfiction trope in the universe where the man was a fictional character for some quite compelling reasons. I do, rather, prefer the cock-up theory, as a man who's had _that_ much smoke blown up his arse for literal decades would develop a dangerously inflated estimation of his own competence. "Just alive to the most obvious possibility, is all. He's betting a great deal on Snape's effectiveness as a double agent - misguidedly, in my view - and the way to make a double agent work? Feed him credible information he can use to entrench himself in the counsels of the enemy. The trick is doing that without unduly compromising your own efforts ..." I trail off, letting Sirius draw the obvious conclusion.

"We're an obvious target, aren't we?"

"We are. And Dumbledore is _absolutely_ not going to countenance the idea that we might actually be more effective than his own efforts, so he won't see it as any great loss. And, really, it's what I'd do if I managed to secure an agent among the Death Eaters and was then stupid enough to publicly burn the poor bastard."

-oOo-

"So you see, Gilderoy, the controversy will be an absolute _boon_ to sales - not just of the book we need your undoubted authorial talent for, but of all your works. Every thundering editorial in the Prophet, every furious controversy in their letters column, every breathless 'what does it mean for witches' piece in Witch Weekly? Free advertising. The best kind, because you literally can't buy it. Nothing sells like controversy." Sirius is leaning forward over the table of one of the Three Broomsticks' private dining rooms, dripping sincerity and buttering up his man at a rate of fucking _knots_.

Sirius naturally took the lead, since this was his idea in the first place. I wrote the outline we want Lockhart to use - he won't like the taste of it until he's pissed in it himself, but I've left plenty of room for him to self-aggrandize so I'm sure he won't do anything too terribly counterproductive - but selling the thing to the man I'm willing, on even a brief acquaintance, to nominate of the title of All Time Biggest Twat Going is Sirius's work.

I mean, sure, I can do a pretty good impression of upper-crust affability, but Sirius is the real deal. It's going down great guns with Lockhart, since apparently you can get the fucker to agree with _anything_ if you include enough high-falutin' flattery.

I've had to smile and put up with some _remarkable_ dickheads in my time - hazard of the job, when you're a lawyer, since complete arseholes tend to get into the kind of trouble that's your bread-and-butter work. I am therefore able to remain composed and chime in appropriately while Sirius does his thing. Turns out they were at school at the same time, anecdotes are going back and forth.

"... and of course, it was _entirely_ obvious that her heart belonged to James from the very beginning. I saw that at once, of course. Quite the heartbreak for me, as you might imagine, but I wasn't one to come in the way of True Love."

"Jolly decent of you," Sirius allows, and _damn_ if the lad can't fake sincerity. There is _no way_ Sirius doesn't find what Lockhart just said utterly offensive and cringingly mendacious. James growing the hell up surprised _everyone_, Lily included. In the course of building the file we're going to give Lockhart, Sirius reminisced a _lot_. Even admitted that he resented her at first, since he'd been upset at his best mate suddenly going all grown-up on him. Lily, as he saw it, had locked that in for good. Lockhart implying that he'd foreseen it all along and _that_ was why he didn't snap her up? Even knowing Lily Evans at one remove, via Petunia, Sirius and Remus (the only Marauder she had any time for, and even _him_ she called a pillock to his face) I can tell she'd have had less than no time at all for the gobby Ravenclaw four years her junior.

I'm not ready to unleash my Inner Tom on him quite yet - not before we have his signature on the indenture of contract I've brought along for the purpose (magically binding, because those things make my flinty little lawyer's heart _sing_) - but I doubt I'm going to pass up any chances to serve him a bad turn or two. Got one coming right up, I rather hope.

"So can we count on you, Gilderoy? Besides your talent as a writer, you're _just_ the chap to rectify a wrong done to witches _everywhere_, with the audience you've built up. A little birdie tells me Witch Weekly are thinking of instituting a Most Charming Smile award - I dare say a smile that's behind a public-relations coup like this might be in with a chance at _that!_" Sirius had worried at first. We had a bit of a rehearsal for this and I kept egging him on to more and more flattery. He protested that we'd be piling it on too thick, but he's discovering that he pretty much can't. Somehow he's converting the horrified glee - he's a tolerably good occlumens, but I can still get a read on what he's feeling - into a really good imitation of warm regard and a tinge of hero-worship. I just _know_ he's going to be sorry he doubted me on this. Not, alas, my first narcissist rodeo. Never for one quite this bad, though.

Lockhart favours us with the smile he'll be all but trademarking over the next few years. "You know, I _knew_ today was going to be auspicious. And, indeed, I've always thought witches got rather hard lines: I was just waiting for the right opportunity to do something about it!" _Gilderoy Lockhart: Feminist Ally._ How I don't _hoot_ with laughter I've no idea. "Now you chaps come along with just the thing, and you've done all the legwork for me? Capital!"

"Quite so," I say, slipping into the conversation. "Now, obviously, Sirius's role in all this is as a patron of fine literature, as is appropriate for a gentleman of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black," I know I'm going to catch it from Sirius for that one. One of the previous Sirius Blacks had a large helping of grandiosity on his smorgasbord of mental illness, and ordered enough stationery with that tagline on it that they were still using it a century later. Nobody actually calls them that: even most of the family are embarrassed by it, but daren't admit as much in public for fear of losing face.

"Quite! I dare say I can write a properly fulsome dedication, why, for the frontispiece of _Holidays with Hags, _I -"

I hold up a hand. "Let me stop you there, Gilderoy. We did our homework: we know to expect great things from you. So, let's get the admin out of the way, shall we? Just a little memorandum to sign so we've a record of what we've agreed." I slide the parchment indenture across the table to him. "It records the honorarium Sirius will be paying and the outline of the book we want you to write. And, if your regular publisher won't bite - we're sure they will, your name on the cover is a thousand sales on its own - this obliges us to print and distribute the work."

"Well, that's a weight off my mind. From the way you're talking you want me to actively _court_ controversy, and my editor's a bit of an old stick-in-the-mud, don't you know." He grins impishly, "Should I be checking this for small print, haha?"

"Gilderoy," I say, hamming up the reproachful look, "We're all gentlemen here, aren't we? Besides, would we want to be known as the fellows who deceived Gilderoy Lockhart? I think not. Public opinion would be brutal, and the witches would come to cut up what remains, I dare say!"

We all chuckle at that. In my case because it's either laugh or chin the fucker.

Lockhart signs - large, flourishy, in lavender ink with a peacock quill whose magic shrieks like the bird it came from - while Sirius and I attach the seals we've had made up. Sirius's is the arms of the Black family differenced with a charge of a black dog couchant in place of the central raven, while mine - temporarily, until I can get the magical division of the College of Heralds to answer my fucking owls - is a Rhinocerous Rampant (Because I'm thick-skinned and charge a lot. The joke isn't old, it's _heritage humour_.)

"Now," I say, once we each have our part of the indenture tucked away, all signed and sealed, "there's just one last bit of housekeeping. There _was_ an item of fine print in that contract - magically binding - but it works out to your benefit, since it means an end to your life of crime, Gilderoy."

He starts to puff up for a good bluster, but I give him the Tom Stare to paralyse and frighten him into submission. "No more memory charming your interviewees, Gilderoy. When I told you we'd done our homework, I wasn't messing about. And your coverups weren't quite perfect. This book, Gilderoy, is where you make the pivot from 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Gentleman Adventurer' to 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Chronicler of Heroes'. Leave them their memories, jazz up their stories all you want, imply you've done something similar that you're just too modest to record in print if you want, but leave the brave their credit. You won't like the penalties."

Lockhart's glaring at me like a ruptured bullock. He's narcissistic enough to be immune to Impostor Syndrome, but he knew he was an impostor as a matter of fact and nobody enjoys the experience of getting caught. My smile in return is a chilly thing, I do so love having an opponent on the ropes like this. "You'll also find, when you actually read the thing, that you're not permitted to act against us or our interests in so far as they are known to you. We have you boxed, Gilderoy, but fear not! Play nicely and you'll be just as famous and rich as you dreamed of being. We'll even help. And, best of all, it'll be honest fame and riches and you won't have to worry about blackmailers catching up with you. Oh, and as a point of style, get your subjects to fully document their methods and include a technical appendix. It'll make your books useful as well as entertaining, and in a few years time you can collect the appendixes together as a serious work on Defensive Magic. You might even see _that_ set as a text for Hogwarts students. Your work educating an entire rising generation: think on _that_!"

I relax my magical grip on Lockhart's mind, and there's a long silence. "Of course," he says, the smile coming back - and it is a _very_ charming smile, you can tell he practises it in front of a mirror - "it's a career move I've long been planning. As you say, no cover-up is perfect. You've just moved my schedule up a little, that's all. I should really be thanking you."

Because of _course_ Gilderoy Lockhart, Gentleman Adventurer, was ahead of us the whole time.

Twat.

-oOo-

"Where did you get to all day?" Remus asks as I come in. He's made considerable progress on the big wall of news clippings in the weeks since we hired him, and now he's filling in the spaces on a paper spreadsheet he has pinned to a transfigured drawing board. Whatever his other faults, he's diligent, studious and methodical. And not the autodidact I am with arithmancy, so he's got a fund of techniques to round out the analysis I'd been doing. He's in for a considerable raise, I think.

"Well, I had a brief meeting with Lockhart this morning, he's complaining about my insistence on sticking to the facts. I had to jolly him along with encouragement to describe those facts in prose even purpler than his usual. He's useful, but fuck my old boots but hanging on to his lead is tiring. After that, I spent most of the day with the Lovegoods. Originally to get Xeno on board with publicity for the Lockhart book, which he's fine with as the line we're taking dovetails nicely with several of his conspiracy correspondents' pet lunacies."

"I thought the Quibbler took that sort of thing seriously?"

"Officially, yes. In private, Xeno's particular hobbyhorse is cryptozoology with a side order of questing after the truth behind old legends. The conspiracy stuff he prints because it fills the paper and 'encourages a politically questioning habit of mind' as he puts it. For himself he reckons you just have to follow the money, not look for dark magic and gum disease." I'd been somewhat surprised to find Xeno quite the incisive thinker. Subject to the usual wizarding whackaloonery, of course, but a very switched-on chap. Which I say mostly because he's as easily distracted by interesting questions of philosophy as I am: it was Pandora who reminded us we had actual business to do rather than yarning about the place of empiricism in magical epistemology (we differ _considerably_, but it's a fascinating topic.) I can only speculate that the loss of Pandora, who I would definitely have on the shortlist for 'smartest person I've ever met', will be what turns him into the woolly-minded chap of the books, who only regained his focus when everything went to shit.

"Which clearly didn't take all day, if I follow your implication?"

"No, we got that settled quite quickly. After that it was a bout of philosophical distraction, and over lunch I got into spellcrafting theory with Mrs. Lovegood. Lovely woman."

"Yes, she was two years above me at Hogwarts, of course she was Pandora Shaughnessy back then. Did arithmancy tutoring, I found her a great help."

"Really? I shall have to thank her, the skills she imparted are a great help. Anyway, she's with me on magical core theory being bunk, but shoving against the weight of official support she finds tiresome. We had fun coming up with ways to publish articles ostensibly in support that ridicule it utterly. I think we may be on to a way to prove that that rot Selwyn put out a couple of years back," which is actually the thirteenth edition of Waffling's primer on magical theory and on the book-list for every Hogwarts firstie, "can be used to prove that the best way to ensure strong magical children is for wizards to mate with magical plants."

"Not sheep?" Lupin's humour, while more refined than Sirius's, is still as susceptible to bestiality jokes as anyone's.

"Not sheep, alas, although we did try. The arithmancy doesn't work quite as well. No, it was definitely magical plants that pureblood wizards should be putting the wood to, if you'll pardon the pun."

Remus huffs in disgust. "Not likely, that one was unpardonable. And since you've destroyed the humour of the moment, I can get to the serious conclusion. The death eaters didn't stop."

"I was afraid of that," I said. "How bad?"

"Can't say quite yet, but it's probably between seven and twelve deaths a year. Obviously we're not spotting all of them, but between the sampling error calculations you pointed me at and some fairly brute-force arithmancy I can't seem to get the likely number outside those bounds. Down _hugely_ from the war years, of course, but you're right, the war isn't truly over."

"Fuck. Well, if Sirius's plan works, we're going to have someone to interrogate soon. We'll find out more. And from there we can work back to maybe finding out who's pointing them at their targets."

"If it helps, the arithmancy suggests the Ministry."

"Quite. Unless they've got a really _good_ diviner on hand or they've replicated the Trace as a private concern, there really isn't another option. I suspect the ambiguity you're seeing is as much down to someone at the Ministry having divided loyalties. Cough, uncaught death eater, cough."

"You know you're not supposed to just _say_ cough when you do that, right?"

"Thank you, but I prefer it my way."

We're interrupted by a loud buzz from both our pockets. We've got communication mirrors - I paid extra to have them made to look like mobile phones, so we can use them in public. That buzz is the emergency 'pick up now' signal. We get Sirius' voice out of both mirrors at once as we tap the 'answer' rune.

"Got one, lads!" I can hear a girl shriek in the background. I _think_ this one's called Theophania-but-I-prefer-Tiffany. It's been hard to keep track, Sirius has a very definite _type_.

"Where are you?" Remus asks, with a snarl in his voice that reminds me we're only three days short of a Full Moon.

"Hills above -" he breaks off to snarl out a particularly nasty Old Slavic curse, the Breath of Chernobog - "Appleby. Two wizards, and I'm busy protecting Tiffany. Offset a hundred yards or so, they've got us pinned in a sort of valley thing. Get 'em from above."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Marks & Spencer is one of the older retailers still trading, they have some presence outside the UK. Their clothing lines have long included affordable and not-too-bad off-the-peg suits. Topman, founded in the 1970s, sells suits too, to chaps who don't need them for work but rather for job interviews and appearing before the justices on public-order and affray charges. In 2001 one of their senior executives got in some trouble for publicly admitting that about their customer profile.

I've decided that other than the pubs that appear in canon - the three wizarding bars and the Hanged Man at Hangleton - and the one in Little Whinging which I've done no more than mention, I'm sticking entirely to real pubs. The Silent Inn is real, is reputedly haunted (they've a certificate framed on the wall from some ghost-hunting organisation or other, and the cat lady story is on their website: I've not actually perceived anything myself) and the food and beer are excellent. The pub dog is an absolute treasure, too.

Dicey on Constitutional Law. Written in the 19th century, and went through ten editions to keep it up to date to 1959. Since then various political shenanigans have rendered large chunks of it obsolete, although extracts were still being set as reading when I was a law student in the early 90s.

Magically binding contracts: one is asserted to exist in Goblet of Fire, and the DA sign-up sheet _might_ be another. As a lawyer, the concept _fascinates_ me. As a writer, I'm trying to resist the temptation to go Full Jurisprudence Nerd with it because I'm fairly certain that the niche for that particular interest consists solely of _me_.

An indenture is a parchment document with two copies of the text on it. You sign both, and then cut the copies apart with a jagged line, so the two copies can be confirmed to match. They were traditionally used for contracts of sale of land and contracts of binding servitude, and fell out of use in the late 19th century. Most solicitors' offices will have a few in their document storage safe, and reorganising the nasty greasy things is occasionally a job for the most junior clerk in the firm. And yes, parchment is greasy stuff. It is, after all, basically leather. It has to have some oil or wax in it to remain supple.

Strictly speaking the Black family don't have arms: a coat of arms is personal, not family property. In practise the College of Heralds ensure that the arms of armigerous family members are visibly related. The practise is called 'differencing' and usually it's an extra charge or marks of cadency. I'm letting magical heraldry work on slightly fuzzier rules than the real stuff because it's easier for me.

And yes, Gilderoy Lockhart works for Mal now. Boxed crooks are just so _useful_. Especially when they're villains with not just good, but _master-crafted _publicity.

Paper spreadsheets were a thing before the computerised version came about. No, really: all that stuff that 1-2-3 and Excel and VisiCalc and what-have you automate? Used to be some poor sap's job to do that by hand. Before it was the name of a machine, 'Computer' used to be a _job title._

Like everyone, I'm identifying the home of the Appleby Arrows with Appleby-in-Wesmorland. One presumes that Sirius has taken his date for a nice country walk in the Pennines.

Fanfic recommendation: 0-800-Rent-a-hero by brainthief. Regrettably discontinued - there were shenanigans after the author made a considerably misjudgment - but a superb depiction of Dumbledore-as-well-meaning-but-basically-a-git and Divination as a Real Branch of Magic.


	22. Survived better than the plan did

DISCLAIMER Is the wizarding world chock full of techniques and capabilities that they just don't explore the full potential of? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

Yes, there has been a delay. I'm _used_ to working from home, what I'm not used to is not being alone when I do it, and for an assortment of reasons too tedious to relate I do poorly with changes to routine. It has meant very limited time for hobby activities requiring actual brainpower for the last couple of months, and frankly the entire month of may might as well have been devoured by locusts as far as getting much of any use done went. Still, here we are, and in the hope that I can actually get the more-or-less planned chapter 23 down in text form rather quicker than I did _this one_, off… we…. go!

* * *

CHAPTER 22

"_Where are you?" Remus asks, with a snarl in his voice that reminds me we're only three days short of a Full Moon._

"_Hills above -" he breaks off to snarl out a particularly nasty Old Slavic curse, the Breath of Chernobog - "Appleby. Two wizards, and I'm busy protecting Tiffany. Offset a hundred yards or so, they've got us pinned in a sort of valley thing. Get 'em from above."_

-oOo-

"Hold your ground, Sirius," I snap out, "We'll be portkeying in two minutes." Portkey time from here to Cumbria is probably twenty seconds or so on top of that. If he was in a gunfight it'd be over by then: fortunately magical combat is a bit slower to resolve, since shielding is a thing. Things slow down with higher skill levels, too: evenly-matched skilled mages tend toward stalemate and attrition. A veteran like Sirius - between his family and the war, he's well-seasoned - against two professional hitters is going to be a drawn-out fight.

"Two minutes, got you. Two bad guys, be careful. I can hold them, though. Cheerio!" He doesn't sound too flustered as he cuts the connection: whatever else the family Black may have visited on the man, they made sure he had a repertoire of nasty combat spells.

"We're looking to capture for interrogation, remember," I tell Lupin, "but let's not rule out some gratuitous violence along the way." I'm shedding my suit jacket as I speak, dumping it over a chair on the way to the panic room.

Lupin's following me. "I'm rather in the mood for that, I'm sorry to say."

"We'll take the time-of-the-month joke as read, shall we?" I'm honestly impressed with myself that I haven't made one before now.

"If we are, I'm sending a _pointed_ memo to Personnel about harassment in the workplace," Lupin quips back.

We've reached the panic room. It's not designed for forting up in - _yet,_ although I have some ideas - but a place to keep go-bags and all the 'Oh Fuck' kit we've been acquiring for occasions such as this.

I'd asked Moody for suggestions, he being more experienced than any of us and with a better idea of what, on the market, was good. He'd expressed his approval of preparedness in general - redundant, in my case, I'd been in the habit of keeping a go-bag prepared for life's little emergencies for something like thirty years before I died - and suggested setting aside a space for rapid gearing-up that could double as the house's fortified citadel if things went _really_ sideways. Which is why we have a room lined with racks and shelves and tables with things laid out ready. When the square footage of your house is not far short of 'arbitrarily large, if you don't mind flouting the licensing and inspection regs' it's hard to consider any space truly wasted. Just, you know, make more space as you need it.

This one is in the cupboard on the first-floor landing with the immersion heater tank, and only if you turn the doorknob clockwise to open it while thinking _firmly_ of a pink elephant. Otherwise all you see is plumbing and spare household linens.

Once I've got it open, we each go to our own kit - issued kit in Remus's case, I don't pay him enough that he can be this well found out of his own pockets. We've both got dragonhide dueller's doublets which have the advantage of going over robes or proper clothing alike. My own is customised with big front pockets like the old-time Bren Bra, filled with all the stuff I've prepped for just this occasion.

Wizards are accustomed to using their wands as the only weapon they need, and conjuring or transfiguring anything else on the fly, but I ain't that good yet. I'm falling back on a time honoured muggle maxim: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. Transfigure and animate nasty things, transfigure _again_ into something readily storable, and reverse that second transfiguration when you need someone discommoded by the nastier horrors from the genre fiction bestiary. Transfiguration is limited by imagination, and there's no rule that it has to be _your_ imagination when it _could_ be e.g. H. R. Giger's.

It's why I've got the big front pockets. I haven't made enough to quite fill them yet, still less any need for extension charms, but they're nearly full of little figurines (because not changing the shape makes the transfiguration easier as well as solving the labelling problem) of all sorts of nasty creatures and useful items. Only two of the customised xenomorphs, because even with the animation coming from my own personal _anima_ it's a bugger getting them to hold still while I carve runes into their carapaces with a dremel.

(I haven't figured out how to give them acid blood, or at least acid that spurts out when they're damaged, but it's on the to-do list. And unlike the _jackass_ that invented Acromantulae, I've made them no more sapient than they need to be and absolutely _cannot_ reproduce. I'm making _that_ a firm rule for when I get to the point of making my own actual living monsters rather than the transfigured imitations: if Rubeus Hagrid gets one as a pet, he won't be able to cross-breed it with anything.)

Basically, I'm trying to develop a style of combat that draws more from Magic: The Gathering than it does from this universe's, for all it's implemented under the local magical rules. We've not been able to drill it much, but both Remus and Sirius reckon that if I can get enough shit thrown I should be able to force most opponents into point defence mode quite quickly, giving me time to figure out a finishing move. On which subject I've got some ideas. Nothing, alas, that I've actually turned into formal plans, let alone practised. Going to have to wing it.

We're at the 90 second mark when I've got my boots laced up and am checking everything's in its place and secure: portkey rides are rough at the best of times. "Ready?" Remus asks, his communication mirror out and the completely non-functional keypad flipped open.

I hand my phone to him so he can set the portkey, and grab a pair of goggles that I perch on my forehead, "I am. He said a hundred yard offset, you go with north and I'll take south. If he's where I think he is, chances are the valley he's in runs north-east to south-west." It's a vague recollection from hiking in that vicinity twenty subjective years ago. I rather wish Sirius could have waited until we were ready and baited this encounter properly, although I can quite understand a man his age wanting to get out and meet pretty ladies. Someone _else_ has got the information-leading-to prize, doubtless from seeing him out and about in Appleby, which has a high concentration of magicals. As a result, I'm about to head out on the bounce with maybe two hours of aging potion left in my system, no more than a vague idea of the ground and only the pre-prepared combat accoutrements I have to hand. Still, mustn't grumble.

I've picked south because that'll (probably) give me quicker access to the lower part of the valley, as my style of magical fighting _ought_ to be better suited to creating a cordon to prevent our prey escaping and that's the quickest route out. The bad guys will have cast anti-disapparation jinxes to keep their prey from escaping, and Sirius is carrying a runestone with an even more powerful anti-magical-transport spell written on it that he will have activated for exactly the same reason.

I let Remus handle setting the pre-charmed portkeys in our mirrors. _Portus_ is a finicky charm with a _lot_ of variables and modes of operation, and while even quite egregious errors will get you to your destination in one piece, leaving it to the guy who's Not Good With Charms is a recipe for arriving ten feet in the air upside down, or similar. Especially if you're using the homing version that's absolutely bleeding edge, and had to pay the guy who makes them a hefty mark-up for adding the 'offset arrival' functions. We're in for a rough ride as it is.

"On three," Remus says when he's done with both mirrors, and I take mine back off him and pull my goggles down. There's a subjective wind-blast when riding these things. "One, two, three -"

"Energise!" We both shout in unison. Can you tell that it was me who got to set the activation word?

The simple description 'like a hook behind the navel' doesn't _nearly_ do justice to how bloody awful portkeys are to ride. Even if you get a master-crafted one that'll put you down like a feather on a baby's bottom, the sensation of transport starts out disconcerting, segues into nauseating and settles down into tiresomeness. This is, while master-crafted, an emergency ride-to-the-rescue version, using a charm that is of a design we can charitably call 'not yet mature' with a destination that is probably moving about as Sirius fights to defend himself and (probably, Tiffany's young enough to have suffered from the Defence-teacher curse) his date. Even in a body with a more robust inner-ear than the one I was born with, it feels like falling sideways through a tornado.

The best I can do is splay out to keep the spinning to a minimum and brace myself for the need to perform a parachute landing fall-and-roll that I realise I haven't practised _nearly enough._

-oOo-

"Fuck," I grunt out as I come to a halt after a second roll brought on by the steep slope I landed on. I'm in waist-high bracken, which helped break my fall but I've got stems and stalks and leaves in unmentionable places. Probably ticks into the bargain. And I suspect I'm going to be feeling that ankle shortly, _blast it_.

The bracken is good concealment, which is good, but I have to _force_ myself to put my head up. God knows I've done enough fighting in my time, but it was all punch-ups in bars, with a skinful of beer down me and the young man's inevitable sense of invulnerability. I'm stone cold sober and (mentally) in my fifties, I don't do that any more. As for the parallels between magical combat and gunfights, I've been shot at _once_. I was too busy running away to be sure, but none of us got hit and since the oldest of us was fourteen I doubt that the gamekeeper was actually aiming to do anything other than scare us off.

I found it exhilarating at the time, but then poaching seems like _such_ a lark when you're playing at juvenile delinquency. Now I can hear the shriek and babble of curses flying about over the drone of the anti-disapparation spells and the thought of putting my head up makes my arsehole _pucker_.

I manage, though, and discover that nothing is headed my way: doubly a relief, since spells don't ricochet like bullets do. The clough - dialect word for the cut a small stream or beck carves in the side of a hill - rises to my right with an outcrop of grey rock blocking the view to the top third. The other side is just as brackened-up as the one I'm on, Remus is somewhere in that and doubtless keeping his head down just as assiduously.

There's a sheep track to my close front, with a wire fence just beyond. Down by the beck, which is in full spate with the spring rains and the last of winter's snow melting into it, there are two wizards taking cover in the stream bed and taking turns to loose evil-looking curses uphill toward the outcrop that appears to be Sirius's hiding place. Sirius, for his part, is lobbing equally nasty magic back at them to keep them from advancing. The ground between the two positions is scorched, twisted, slimed, glowing in patches and littered with pathetically-mangled transfigured and conjured beasties, some of which are still trying to drag their wrecked and cursed selves toward the enemy or each other.

There are probably all sorts of proper tactical observations to be made, and while I _have_ bought as much of the available literature as I can, none of it's doing me a whit of good because most of it I haven't even taken out of the shipping boxes, never mind read any of it. Sirius's gadding about has cost us the opportunity to have my first magical combat be under _complete_ control and as far from a fair fight as I can possibly contrive.

Deciding to get weaving before things get any worse, I quickly learn that my hands are shaking too much to unbutton the pockets with all my stuff in. I giggle a bit as I realise that this is something I actually _did_ plan for. Hip pouch, left side, medical potions. Hexagonal phial with little bumps on the glass - magical glassmakers carry _huge_ varieties of touch-identifiable potion phials and bottles for exactly this reason - and I have a half-dose of Draught of Peace down my neck. The few seconds it takes to kick in I spend calming myself by mundane means: breathing, sensory grounding, the usual tricks for fending off a panic attack.

Half dose because the last thing you need in a difficult situation is to be too chilled out to actually cope, you need to be sparking at least a little bit. Not least because animated transfigurations partake of the _anima_ of the one who made them: I'll look a proper pillock if my transfigured attack beasts decide that nonviolent passive resistance is the way forward. I've got some experience in keeping my dander up while without emotion, of course. I spend most nights completely absent the necessary glands and hormones and still manage to find things to be at least mildly indignant about.

_These fuckers have attacked my friend!_

First things out of the pockets are the little mesh bags of ripper swarms, basically ambulatory mouths full of razor-sharp teeth and I was careful to fast for a day and a night before I made them. As a result hey're born _hungry_ and I've a couple of hundred of the nasty little rat-size beasts. They'll be hard to spot in the vegetation around here, and they're just the right size to run up trouser-legs. I got these from Warhammer 40k, where they're one of the options from Codex:Tyranids. I'm not up to Carnifexes and Genestealers yet, but when I am, anyone that picks a fight with me is going to be _proper_ fucked.

My little villains scuttle off through the gaps in the fence and vanish amid the bracken. They're pretty obvious on open ground, and area effects will work against them, so I'm going to need to follow them up with more obvious threats that the bastards are going to have to honour.

_These utter bastards have had the infernal gall to try and ambush him while he's out having fun!_

Next is the flock of velociraptors. Not the Spielberg version, these are modelled on _V. Mongoliensis_. Just to drive home the fighting spirit, I bought a fighting cock through one of Sirius's low-life contacts and transfigured feathers I plucked off him into a hunting pack of replicas of his famous ancestors. If I lose focus on the target, they start fighting each other, just like their progenitor would have wanted to. Chickens are violent little bastards, as anyone who's ever kept them will tell you, and the males are straight-up bloodthirsty maniacs. The ones they use for illegal cockfights aren't trained much, they're just given weapons and turned loose on each other.

My hunting horrors are a little more focussed, and when I made them I kept the behaviour and cunning of the Spielberg versions firmly in mind. I'm hoping for some 'clever girl' moments out of these, as I tip out their miniatures and sweep my wand to spread the general transfiguration reversal spell over them. "_Redeunto_, and fly, my pretties, fly!" The effect is a bit spoiled as they squawk like the chicken they're patterned from, but they arrow into the bracken in a satisfyingly predatory fashion.

_If these filthy fucking criminals could have figured it out they'd have tried to take Sirius at home, threatening _MY _house!_

I'm going to need a cordon to block off the bottom of the valley. I should get that going sooner rather than later, and it needs to be unobtrusive until it's needed. Best thing I've got for that is the diamond dogs. Since I _can_ transfigure diamond out of coke, and it's pretty strong stuff if I leave the impurities in just like other grades of industrial diamond, animated sculptures were an obvious idea. I empty the ziploc bag of plastic miniatures - carbon to hydrocarbon transfigurations, dead easy - and pull out the runestone I need to animate them.

_Fuck_.

I realise as I get the runestone out - but before I actually place and activate the thing - that this is going to take upward of a minute or two. I reverse those transfigurations, I'm going to have a big pile of sculptures, they're going to make a massive commotion when I animate them.

I pop up to see how things are going. Remus and Sirius have established a crossfire, raining beams and bolts and arcs and horrible mists down on a little sangar that the baddies have transfigured for themselves out of riverbed rocks. Good news, that, the tables have turned. Better news, their backs are to the hunting packs of velociraptors that have just cleared the bracken and are using what dead ground they can find to stalk closer, about half of them sweeping out to the flanks. The ripper swarm is still working its way through the bracken, I can see the tops of the plants shuddering in a metre-wide swath as they scuttle along.

Not so good news is that the bastards look like they're quite good on defence. One of them is doing something while crouched down, using his wand to draw in the clay of the riverbank. The other has taken a knee behind his transfigured stone wall and is holding up what looks like a right chodder of a shield that is laughing at everything the Marauders are flinging at it. He's even managing to launch the occasional spell out through it to keep the boys from getting any clever ideas about closing the range.

My guess is that crouching-guy is attempting to curse-break his way out through the counter-trap we've got them in. Which, sure, is going to take a while but his mate is working defensive magic with an air of being able to do this all day. Doubtless alarms are going off somewhere, the Trace on underage magic isn't the only law-enforcement scrying in force in Britain, and before very much longer there are going to be aurors on scene. They don't have guided portkeys to get here, of course, which means we've got maybe half an hour before they can localise the trouble and mobilise. They'd be a lot faster if it wasn't for secrecy, of course: while fitting blues-and-twos to a broomstick and chain-apparating across country in nap-of-earth flight isn't _specifically_ prohibited by the _letter_ of the International Statute of Secrecy, it violates the spirit of the thing considerably beyond the point of taking the piss.

It _does _ mean I've got time to really box these bastards in, so diamond dogs it is. I mean really, they'll be coming to Little Whinging if we don't stop them here, threatening Harry and Dudley and little Daisy (who is a treasure, albeit the reason I'm going to have to be civil to Marge at the christening in a couple of months' time) and well, really, _fuck that_. I try and restrain my darker impulses, I really do, but put children I care about at risk? Not bloody likely, pal. I'm starting to get my blood up despite the potion.

A little telekinesis gets my hunting pack spread out in a line on the other side of the fence. A sweep of the wand and "_Redeunto!"_ and I have a line of sculptures. A moments thought and I risk hopping up to get over the fence myself: if that fence is a property line, I want the rune-stone over it. Quick slashes with the knife that's part of my standard kit - nothing magical about it, just a sharp piece of steel - give me a square of turf to peel up exposing bare soil. A slash across my left palm gives me the blood I need to consecrate it to this ground (I'll have to smash it later, and the hours of patient carving wasted thereby make me wince as much as the cut I'll have to disinfect before I heal it).

With the incantation for _that_ done, and the magic of the runestone gently chuckling as it settles in, I stand up and fix my gaze on the enemy. "_Piertotum Locomotor! Bring 'em DOWN!"_

My dogs come to life and surge forward. Translucent and smoky - they may be animated, but there's no material change - they look like a pack of grims bounding into the attack.

Both baddies turn to look at me. The expressions on their faces are _priceless_.

I don't hear the incantation, but the defender - black hair, straggly goatee, chestnut leather trenchcoat and muggle attire - sweeps his wand around and his shield expands to cover the full three-sixty.

It's at that point that the central column of raptors crow and leap. I _really_ have to work on those, because chickens are _not_ scary enough. They need to scream like birds of prey, damn it. Their claws spark and skitter on the shield as they try to scramble up and over it, but they're not birds so they can't actually propel themselves up with their wings.

They might not be able to reach their prey, but the effect they have on the buggers' peace of mind is _entirely_ gratifying. Curse-breaker - white-blond, clean-shaven, wearing actual robes unlike his pal - winces and while I can't _quite_ lip-read the profanity I think he's been put right off his curse-breaking stroke, while goatee-defender sends out a couple of gouts of flame to deal with the ones that got nearest to overtopping his shield. Why he hasn't gone for all-axis coverage I don't know, but I suspect it has to do with his need to be able to fire back. The more mental attention he devotes to that shield, the less he's able to give to cursing.

Behind them, Sirius and Remus and, yes, Tiffany have come out from cover. The two boys are keeping up the barrage, a spell every few steps. Their accuracy is suffering, but since they seem to be sticking to explosive hexes, close counts. Tiffany isn't joining in, but she _has_ got a shield charm up to her considerable credit.

Tiffany's a problem. To a lesser extent, so is Remus. Witnesses, to put it bluntly, and I can see that the ripper swarm is closing in and I have some suspicions about the coverage of that shield.

There's an obvious solution, and I'm reaching for my mirror-phone to get Remus on it when Goatee decides he needs to honour the threat I represent and sends a buzzing, swarming blue-grey dollop of nastiness at me. I've closed to perhaps sixty yards, chancy range for spell-casting of this sort, and the solution is obvious. As the spell passes over the line of diamond dogs I've got picking their way down the slope ahead of me, a twitch of my wand has the one it passes over leap up and catch it like it's a frisbee. Because I'm stood on a rock-strewn forty-odd degree slope, so _fuck_ dodging.

Whatever it was - identifying spells from the colour and shape is dubious at best, not that I'm an expert - it doesn't seem to do much to statues, and with a shake of his head my industrial diamond Good Boy keeps pressing the advance.

It reminds me I've been remiss, though. While I _can_ cast a shield charm, several different kinds in fact, it takes me time and they're not very good shields. What I _have_ got is a twelve-hundred-mill dished disc of two-inch-thick bronze with a big, bold lambda embossed on to the convex face, and I pull that out of the belt pouch it's in, enlarge it and levitate it to my front in best Magic Hoplite fashion. I've engraved protective rune-spells on the back with room for plenty more as my reading turns them up, and I've got an order in for a five mill tungsten facing for the front. Solid cast iron would be better, of course, but getting _that_ enchanted means dealing with goblins or dwarves and that's a level of bullshit I just don't have time for right now. If I actually get to the point of making friends among those people rather than professional contacts, I'll look more seriously at it.

Suitably defended - and the shield makes a reassuring _boonnnnngggg _when something pinky-gold and crackling hits it - I get my phone open. "Remus."

A short pause and "Mal?"

"Get Tiffany and apparate her back to the house for calming potions and hot, sweet tea," I tell him, "I suspect this is about to get gruesome and the poor girl's upset enough already. From the looks, they've dropped _their_ anti-disapparation and they're trying to break ours."

The rippers have closed in on the stream-bank above where the targets are forted up, and I've set them to digging straight down, using their teeth to tear through the soil. They're out of sight of our play-mates, and they're going to test my theory that Goatee hasn't extended his shield below the surface of the ground much if at all. Neither have I, of course, but I'm not the one in a fight with the kind of person who uses horrible bitey devouring swarms that burrow throught the earth and run up trouser-legs as a weapon.

"Will do," he says, and closes the connection. I'm hoping he's sensible enough to keep Tiffany around because I'd rather like a little bit of time with the girl. Eliminate her from my inquiries, sort of thing. The old statistic about it being the person closest to the victim nine times out of ten mandates I at least check. Getting Remus to evacuate her has the advantage that we don't have a werewolf smelling blood just before full moon. He may be one of the lucky ones who only gets the behavioural symptoms while transformed, popular prejudice having some weight of evidence on its side as regards sufferers of lycanthropy - not that uninfected humans don't have their fair share of violent, unthinking brutes - but I'm not minded to put him through what's about to happen.

Goatee tries a few spells directly at the diamond dogs, more-or-less ignoring the increasingly frantic raptors as they crow and claw at the shield. The dogs shrug off the first few tries, the first of which are transfiguration reversal - no, mate, they're real sculptures, I just used transfiguration magic to shape them - and the finishing charm, which needs to hit the rune-stone to work. Something red and simple, something red and complicated-looking, and the dogs just prowl closer, drawing up to the shield and silently miming snarling and barking. I don't order them through because I know what's about to happen.

He's just worked out that explosive hexes knock lumps off my doggies - if he hits square on, I'm making a note that these are a definite win on their first field trial - when the streambank right next to Mr. Curse-breaker erupts in a shower of loose soil, pebbles, and teeth. On instinct, he tries to get his wand between him and the threat, which is how he loses the wand and at least one finger.

At which point two things happen. I have to flinch and turtle down behind my shield, because Goatee sends something at me that rings it like a gong and bites a six inch chunk out of the top edge in a shower of sparks, magical discharge and tiny little globs of molten bronze. Which make me wince when one goes down the back of my shirt. Pinhole burns hurt like a _bastard_. The other thing that happens is that I'm distracted from direct control of the ripper swarm, so they all just pile on to Curse-breaker, following the last order and the default behaviour I visualised them with when I transfigured them out of butchers' scraps. The terrified shrieking and rending noises make me cringe even harder.

By the time I get my head back up again, Goatee has written his 'friend' off as a loss, pulled his shield in close and set everything around him on fire. I'm out one ripper swarm, one velociraptor pack, and my diamond dogs are going to need pressure-washing: whatever he cast, it wasn't hot enough to shatter them with thermal shock, but they're completely covered in soot and bits of burnt feather and meat. Curse-breaker has, if he's lucky, seconds to live and the smell of burnt hair and cooked pork comes close to breaking through my potion-reinforced calm. (If he's _unlucky_ he's going to survive what Goatee just did to him. Magical healing can do a lot, but curse-burns like that are for _life_.)

When the smoke clears away and the flames die down - Curse-breaker, from the looks, got lucky, and I suspect the sight of him, and the noise he made while dying, is going to feature in a few nightmares of mine going forward - Goatee is stood in a column of scintillating light. From the looks, he's left the top aspect open, and if he's got any sense he's remembered the possibility of burrowing attacks this time. I quickly discard the idea of sending Sirius up the valley side to curse him from above: the kind of elevation he'd need would make accuracy doubtful: magical duelling works best at twenty paces or so, and starts to get chancy out past fifty, at which point magical combat becomes a thing of area-effect magic and self-propelled transfigurations and constructs.

I _could_ use some of the debris to transfigure flying nasties, but I haven't practised anything of the sort, don't have anything pre-prepared (memo to self, of course) and it'd provoke him into turtling up altogether. As it is, we're going to have to either get creative - if Sirius knew the shield-breaker spell for this particular shield he'd have done it already - or leave this fucker for the aurors, who can't be far away. That's a non-starter, of course, his evidence will be that he was out for a pleasant country walk when that bastard Black ambushed him with a gang of dark wizards in tow and killed his best friend, at which point it becomes a bribery contest. Which I'll win, but the rumours will be off and running, and I'll actually _have_ a public profile and thereby a complication I don't need. I'm not even going to _start_ on what it'll do to Sirius.

"What _are_ those?" Goatee demands, pointing at the diamond dogs that are now sat on their haunches and trying to stare their way through his shield. Somehow they've animated quite smart, or at least smart for dogs, they seem to know that they can't bark. "They don't die when I burn them, they're not transfigured, what?"

"Professional interest?" I call back. Better, I suppose, to be talking to him rather than letting him blow more chunks out of my shield.

He shrugs. He seems to know the score with the aurors: it'll be enough of a he-bribed, she-bribed situation that nobody's going to prison, so he can afford to wait. Getting caught will cost him professionally, but nothing he can't live down. "Sort of. Black hired you to come running, then?"

"I'm sure we can discuss it later, like gentlemen," I drawl back. One of the big disadvantages of magical combat is that spells travel in straightish lines unless you're _really_ skilled. Neither Sirius nor Remus are good enough to bend 'em like Beckham - it's a stunt that takes absurd amounts of drill to acquire, making it a professional-duellists-only thing - and even if they were, that opening in the top of his shield would be a bastard of a target from the distance they'd need.

I need an attack that I can direct off-axis, and sort of mentally figuring the angles gives me a spark of inspiration. _Literally_. Behind my shield I sketch tiny little figures with my wand to define a large volume of air directly above Goatee and his one-man fortress, and start transfiguring charges within it. He's already stood in a stream, in wet boots, so that's a _really_ good ground.

"_After_ the aurors get here," Goatee replies, "they have _rules_ about what they can do to prisoners."

"Point," I say, having got into the rhythm of the electrical transfiguration quite handily, "although I will say I'm intrigued by that shield charm. Your own work?"

"Oh, yes," he says, a proud smile on his face, "the arithmancy was a sod to do, but it's a wonderfully flexible shield so long as I don't move."

And, apparently, so long as he leaves at least one aspect unshielded. I'm not going to draw his attention to that, I've got a _honking_ big charge built up in the air and I don't want to prompt him into closing up the hole in case he's included 'ludicrously high voltage arcs' in his design of the spell.

"We should maybe consider just fucking off," Sirius murmurs from where he's moved up next to me. Going to have to have a word with that boy about crossfires and the value thereof, which he's just thrown away.

I ignore him for the moment, and call out to Goatee, "What does it stop, then?"

"Pretty much everything," he calls back with a grin. "All spells short of the Killing Curse, arrows, muggle bullets, potion mists and gases," which explains the not-all-around thing, he needs to _breathe, _"rocks, slingstones, beasts conjured and not, wind and water, one time an angry old duffer with a walking stick -"

I decided I've a. heard enough and b. got enough charge built up, with a couple of dozen cubic metres of moist air ionized to a _hilariously_ unnatural degree. I keep it up much longer and he's going to start smelling ozone. I let the whole thing just … drop, relying on him being the best route to ground. I've no idea what the voltage is, but it looks like I just discharged one of those really _big_ mad-scientist-lab-prop tesla coils from Hammer House of Horror. We don't see the fucker's skeleton flash through his flesh like in the cartoons, but that's all we're lacking. A flash, a bang, and he's on the other side of the stream from where he started, where his convulsions have flung him. Better than ten feet from where he was standing, from the looks.

"Shield _that_, you fucking _casual,_" I snarl at the twitching carcass. There's steam, smoke, something or other rising off him. He's not actually dead, but I'm pretty sure it's only wizarding durability that's kept him alive.

"What the bloody hell was _that?_" Sirius demands.

I give him my best slasher smile. "Bit … shocking, was it?"

"You have _got_ to teach me that. And why didn't you use it earlier?"

"Had to transfigure a big enough charge, position it just right. Takes time to set up. It's why it's not terribly useful in a fight like this, but since he thought he was safe enough to stand around and banter and wait for the aurors I had the chance. And he used a shield that didn't let him move and that _had_ to have a hole in it, the pillock." I hold out a hand and magically yank the soon-to-be-deceased's wand into it. "And yes, I can teach you how to do it, but you're going to have to do some studying to understand the principles involved."

"Huh. So it's not all just corposant and sparks, then?"

"Nope. You know all those safety rules I made you learn for the electrical appliances? There's a reason for them, fuck around with electricity and it can do things like this. Oooh, we should get a Van De Graff Generator and some tesla coils. And a Jacob's Ladder, which is more or less useless but adds a real touch of mad scientist chic to the place!" I'm babbling a bit. The potion only did so much, I've still got a bit of an adrenaline charge going.

"We should clean up here, and get gone before the rozzers arrive."

"We should. I'll secure the prisoner and the deceased, you get weaving with the repair charms. We can bounce around a bit with the apparitions to confuse the trail home."

I don't pay much attention to what Sirius is doing. The corpse I can transfigure into a dead sheep that I can dump on a completely different moor twenty miles away for crows and other little beasties to nibble on. So long as nobody tries scrying for the dearly departed any time in the next week, he'll be sufficiently scattered as to be unfindable. I've no idea if anyone _is_ that thorough, but I sat through enough police procedurals in the interest of marital harmony that I probably count as a forensically aware offender. Goatee gets a dose of Draught of Living Death, which makes him count as enough of a corpse for easy, reasonably long-lasting transfiguration into an Action Man that I can stuff in my pocket. What takes the longest is getting the dogs turned back into miniatures and the runestone recovered. I am a tad on the shaky side, by this point.

By the time we leave - I've had to take another half dose of Draught of Peace to be steady enough to apparate - the clough has a few scorchmarks and you can faintly tell there's been magic done recently.

-oOo-

By the time we get back, Remus has Tiffany calmed down with a mug of tea in her hands. I can tell that she's pretty sure she doesn't want a second date, and I take a peek into her mind - no occlumency to speak of, since she's rattled and thinks she's home safe - to confirm.

I go and fuss over making my own tea while Sirius does the gentlemanly thing and escorts her to the floo - which the Ministry is billing to James Tiberius Kirk, and believes to be on the outskirts of Woking - to get her home.

"Bad news, Sirius," I tell him when he comes back to the kitchen, "Tiffany there has decided that she doesn't think the Black fortune is worth digging for if she can expect assassination attempts. Worse news, she spent the last week bragging that you'd asked her out to all her friends, so you shouldn't try pressing for a second date unless we can plan the counter-ambush properly, she's a natural-born security leak."

"You think that was deliberate?" Sirius isn't taking a hostile tone, fortunately.

"No, she just hasn't the common sense of a potted geranium and she's an inveterate gossip. Between you and me, you should see if Charity's up for another date, even Moody thinks she's good people." It turned out that Charity is part of the support staff at the auror office, where the background checks are done by everyone's favourite paranoid scouser.

Sirius snorts. "You only like her because she's a fellow tea spod."

"Well, yes. It's an excellent personal quality to have. If I wasn't firmly off the market until my current body grows up, I'd be explaining to her, at length, how much better a catch I am than you could ever hope to be." It's at about this point that my day's ageing potion wears off, and an adult dose of the post-fight shakes gets concentrated into a child-sized space.

Both Remus and Sirius look concerned when I start shaking, and make noises about whether I need anything.

"I'll be fine with a good night's kip," I reassure them, "all the excitement's a bit much when you're physically under seven. Brewing Unctious Unction to have a chat with our guest is going to have to wait until morning."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Wizarding space expansions: a very great deal of the wizarding world makes a surprising amount of sense if you assume that space extension magic is the wizarding world's equivalent to integrated circuits, a massively useful technology that they use _everywhere_. Commentary on fanfic used to be quite scathing of the whole 'massive space-expanded trunk you can live in' trope (even though there's one seen as early as Goblet of Fire) and then in the first Fantastic Beasts movie we see Newt Scamander cutting about with _an entire safari park in an overnight case._ With the ability to open on a perfectly normal set of luggage if you manipulate the catch right. Which last feature I've used here.

The 'Bren Bra' was the forerunner of the modern assault vest. Didn't catch on in that form, being too far ahead of its time.

Using pre-prepared items like Felix the Cat pulling tricks out of his bag seems natural to a long time rpg-er like me, but doesn't seem to have occurred to pureblood wizards even though there are obvious methods in canon magic for doing it and the Weasley Twins even implemented a few. (If you want a look at how a Dungeons and Dragons magic-user would fare in wizarding Britain, this chapter's rec is Harry Potter and the Natural 20 by Sir Poley on FFN. It's funny if you're not familiar with D&D tropes, and _hilarious_ if you are.)

Flip phones were less than two years away at the time this chapter is set, surprising as it may seem to you kids with your fancy smartphones. It was a motorola one, the first one that wasn't either the size and heft of a brick or had to be mounted in a car. (I actually had to explain to my kids what a carphone _was_ a few years ago.) Mal knows what'll be on the market soon, and reckons he can get away with using one in public a bit early.

Homing portkeys: they're considerably less new-fangled in canon, when the Snatchers are using them to drop in on Taboo violators, but that's more than ten years after these events.

The incantation for the transfiguration reversal spell is just one of the imperative conjugations of the latin verb 'to go back' - _finite incantatem_ would remove _all_ the transfigurations on an object, which Mal doesn't want.

Blues-and-twos - blue lights and two-tone sirens, as seen on emergency services vehicles and police cars. If you're now picturing Moody tear-arsing through the sky on a broomstick with a flashing blue light on his pointy hat and screaming "NEE NAW NEE NAW" at the top of his lungs, you're welcome.

Mal uses an insane mish-mash of metric and imperial units. Like me, he was born in an era of pre-decimal coinage and imperial measurement and the early years of a changeover that isn't finished yet fifty years on. His kids, like mine, keep having to ask what that is in real money. Like them, you're just going to have to cope.

Action Man was the UK-licensed version of the original GI Joe. Fully poseable with gripping hands and eagle eyes that you could swivel left and right with a little lever on the back of his head, he came with a wide variety of outfits and accessories. My Action Man Submersible may still be at the bottom of Stanley Park Boating Lake, for all I know...


	23. It came out in the wash

DISCLAIMER: Have I turned, as I age, into a disagreeable old reactionary with a penchant for being publicly nasty to people who already get the shitty end of the stick from society in ways that flatly contradict positive messages central to my earlier published work? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

This chapter was briefly delayed by my laptop shitting the bed on Thursday evening, about ten minutes after the latest I could set out to the nearest place that'll sell a new one over the counter in these still-somewhat-locked-down times. All my mission-critical data was in cloud storage, fortunately (The personal and sentimental stuff was another story), but I had to get a lot of tiresome reinstalling done before I could get back to work… I'm also at home to recommendations of data-recovery specialists in the north west of England.

* * *

CHAPTER 23

_Both Remus and Sirius look concerned when I start shaking, and make noises about whether I need anything._

"_I'll be fine with a good night's kip," I reassure them, "all the excitement's a bit much when you're physically under seven. Brewing Unctious Unction to have a chat with our guest is going to have to wait until morning."_

-oOo-

"So, is that everything we can think of?" We've had an actual after-action review, like grownups and everything. None of us have much more than the first bloody clue what we're doing - it's only the morning after, so it's not like I've actually had time to read any of the stuff on tactics and similar, and while Sirius and Remus _have_ been in combat before, it was without formal training and trial and error is a poor way to learn anything. There are, however, some obvious mistakes we can acknowledge and plan to train out. The various ways we made a complete horlicks of the whole operation are scrawled on a whiteboard in the workroom we use for the media monitoring operation.

"Apart from the bit where you called out that last incantation loudly enough to warn your targets, I think you're being a bit hard on yourself," Sirius says, "I mean, no training for magical combat and dropped in the muck on two minutes' notice? A case of the shakes that you had the potions to hand for is _nothing_. And it's not like we didn't all make an assortment of mistakes."

"I'll take the face-saving, and thank you for it," I say. I don't seem to be having any adrenaline hangover today, so either Harry's genes for this sort of thing are better than my original ones - plausible, based on his performance in the books - or the calming potions did what I hoped they would. A non-specific healing potion took care of the wrenched ankle overnight, and I'm otherwise fine.

"We could perhaps have used a smaller off-set for the portkeys, and dropped together?" Remus puts in, less diffident than usual since his pre-lunar edginess is amped up from usual and breaking through the Wolfsbane potion, "We could perhaps have coordinated better if we'd dropped together, and your creatures would have had less ground to cover."

"The coordination's a good point," I allow, "but if we can sort out some sort of communications? If we can find or figure out a voice-only version of the talking mirrors that we can wear as an earpiece they'd be a godsend in situations like this. I don't want to lose the advantage of having a crossfire. As for arriving further out, I think the distance was something we got about right. First thing I thought of when we got the homing portkeys made was it was like parachuting into battle, and while I'm no expert I do recall reading that hot landing zones are something to be avoided, you drop where it's safe and move to contact the enemy. Which a hundred yards was about right for on that terrain. Admittedly, that's hindsight talking: I was mostly thinking about how steep-sided some of those cloughs can be. I can't exactly put my hand on my heart and say I wouldn't have suggested a closer landing if I'd thought we were going to be arriving on level ground."

"If we're going to sum up, I suppose," Remus says, "there's that lovely phrase you keep repeating: it it's stupid but it works, it's still stupid and you were lucky."

That earns nods all around. We've got notes in plenty, things to consider and training to plan. Hopefully our next warlike outing will require a bit less good fortune.

"The other thing to consider," Sirius adds, "is what the hell I'm going to do for a social life." Tiffany's owl arrived first thing, thanking Sirius for a lovely day out but that she felt she'd had _quite_ enough excitement for one lifetime.

We get a chuckle out of that. "Good luck finding someone who's fine with the possibility of assassins dropping in on your fun," Remus says.

"The next girl you ask out," I say, "find out if she's happy with dates on the nonmagical side. Means you won't be spotted by anyone who'll tip off whoever wants you dead _and_ it'll weed out the ones with connections you _really_ want to avoid."

"I'm assuming you have some suggestions to offer?" Sirius has a suspicious look on his face. By sheerest luck he'd seen _The Longest Day_ before I tried to convince him that parachutists survived jumping out of planes by nothing more than grit and raw courage: he has reason to be suspicious of anything I tell him.

"Don't look at me like that," I admonish him, "I ain't going to stop schooling you in the art of the wind-up, but when it comes to date suggestions you can breathe easy. There is an innocent party involved and ruining a complete stranger's evening out - worse than you'll manage on your own, degenerate that you are - is beneath me."

"Point taken. So how do the gentlemen of the nonmagical community entertain their dates?"

"Well, assuming you want to stay at the high society end, you can afford the best restaurants, so long as you can get over being served by humans rather than elves or similar. The cinema's probably going to be a bit much for most pureblood girls and quite a lot of the halfblood ones too, the cultural divide between here and Hollywood is a bit much for _me_ sometimes, but there's plenty of theatre, musicals, the opera -" I trail off, Sirius has copped a fairly surprised look.

"Opera for a _date?_"

"Well, I grant you it's not _everyone_'_s_ taste, but both the the gramophone shops on Diagon Alley sell opera selections -"

"Yes, but sitting around a gramophone listening to opera for a _date_?"

"I was thinking more in terms of, you know, _going_?" We're clearly at cross-purposes, here, and I've no idea how. "What with it being a performance kind of thing?"

"Well, yes, over the summer. And you have to go to Paris."

Well, _that's_ an eyebrow-raiser. "I'm pretty sure Covent Garden and Glyndebourne are a lot closer than that. And year-round, too. Do you mean to tell me that the entire wizarding world has only one opera company and they're part timers?" I already knew that wizarding Britain had less theatre in a year than London offered on a typical Wednesday, and I'd sort of assumed that wizarding opera buffs just swallowed their racist pride and went to Covent Garden. It's not even like they'd stand out all that much, not in that neighbourhood. From the sound of things, the entire wizarding world has less provision for opera (and, I assume, ballet and Serious Music) than bloody _Birmingham_.

"Well, apparently so. I _thought_ your record collection had a lot of opera in it."

"A dozen or so records isn't a _lot_. I'm not even _close_ to being a buff, I just picked up a few I knew I liked." Most of them, not even for the _entire_ opera, just one aria with fond or sentimental memories attached: even after nearly twenty subjective years I still mist up whenever I hear the flower duet from Lakhme. "Anyway, we should probably start getting _Time Out,_ I have a sneaking suspicion that even for a pureblood you're in dire need of cultural education and enrichment. And wipe that look off your face, Lupin, you need to get more comfortable away from the magical world, too."

"I should've run back to Yorkshire when you warned me to, Padfoot," Lupin says, although he's smiling as he says it.

"It's all the scarier coming from a kid his age," Sirius says, looking at me with diabolically overacted horror.

"Do try and remember, you two, that despite the appearance of beardless youth I'm old enough that I had kids your age. Some of the resulting habits, like looking to your education as well-rounded gentlemen, are hard to break. And on that bombshell, I need to get down to the potions kitchen," I refuse to call it a lab: I don't know enough to experiment, and 'kitchen' is the name of the room where you follow recipes. "Someone we know needs to wake up confused, gullible, talkative, and absolutely certain I'm his best friend in all the world."

-oOo-

You can forget your Jack Bauers and your Gestapo vays-und-means-off-makink-you-talk, if you want information out of someone, step one is Establishment of Rapport. This goes for police interviews - if they're calling it interrogation they're _already_ off on the wrong foot - and client meetings alike. The clever trick of our particular branch of the ape family is that we _talk_, and we like to do it with friends.

(There's a brilliant series of popular science books based around the Discworld, whose authors suggest not-entirely-in-jest that our species name ought to be _Pan narrans_, the storytelling ape.)

The truth serums of spy fiction aside, interrogation drugs that have actually had worthwhile effect have been the ones that lower the subject's inhibitions and give him a sense of amicable bonhomie. Which is to say that all your fancy-dan modern pharmaceuticals do precious little more than you could achieve with a couple of beers in pleasant surroundings.

_Potions_ on the other hand can be a little better targeted. Once you've got the right brews creeping through your subject's veins and ensnaring his senses, you're halfway home, and the most basic of training in interview technique will take you the rest of the way.

I have spent the last two days in the kitchen concocting a cocktail of contented and confounded colloquiality (the Alliterator's Assistive Admixture is a side project, destined to go in Sirius's next pre-date drink if he tries to use the whoopee cushion he thinks I don't know he's got) and I have my man in a transfigured replica of a police cell, wearing a tyvek boiler suit. Until I was ready to put him there, I had him in the kitchen in his Action Man transfiguration while I've been working, much of that time in various humorous poses.

Sirius did briefly toy with the idea of nipping out to get another Action Man to set up some compromising positions. I distracted him by pointing out that it was the weekend, and to prevent the boys from blundering in while we have a dangerous criminal on the premises he should spring a couple of surprise day-trips to somewhere exciting on them. Vernon, Petunia and Daisy will be glad of the peace and quiet.

I've searched the clothing I stripped off him. There's no formal ID to be had - the nearest thing the Ministry of Magic issues is Apparition licenses, which there's no legal requirement to carry. As far as I can tell the magical world doesn't bother with passports. I don't know whether it's the impracticality of regulating wizarding travel or the usual wizarding incompetence. The reason I know that our prisoner is a Mr. Ywain Fawley, currently resident on Anglesey, and that he's 'Way' to his friends and girlfriend, is that the utter nincompoop had all his recent correspondence in his inside coat pocket, complete with draft replies scrawled on the backs of the parchments. To cap it off, he has a recent summons to appear before the Council of Magical Law on charges of misdemeanour Mugglebaiting.

I also learn that Fawley is a big ol' racist. I have three data-points for this conclusion. First, the aforementioned summons. Sure, it's _possible_ to commit that offence by accident, but to do it badly enough that the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol takes an interest requires _intent_. Second, he's quite open about his opinions of muggles and the muggleborn in correspondence, to the point of having a regular exchange of mudblood jokes with one of the Paris Rosiers. Third, and most tellingly, he has a Dark Mark. This makes that bundle of owl-mail rather more of an intelligence coup than I could reasonably have hoped for. I don't have time or resources to find out if he's a poor unfortunate Imperius victim or just uncaught, but I'm willing to bet that all of the people he's written to are Persons of Interest in that regard.

The most important thing I learn, however, is that Fawley _might_ be on Abraxas Malfoy's payroll. Three different notes-of-hand in varying amounts, adding up to nearly five hundred galleons. The charm to confirm they're authentic takes me a couple of tries to get right, but they come up clean. Such things are, of course, the reason the wizarding world doesn't have paper money: if you've got a reputation for being rich, you can be your own fractional-reserve bank, issuing your own notes backed by the gold in your Gringotts vault.

The cautious thing to do would be to make sure you never have more notes in circulation than you have gold in your vault, but since the magical world doesn't hold with muggle nonsense like 'due course' for even simple proto-cheques like these, they get used like paper money is in the real world. As such they're a way for the likes of the Malfoys to spend more money than they've got. The bad news is that I can't be _sure_ Fawley's working for Malfoy - he might have won these notes at cards, or been paid with them by some third party - but the good news is that it gives me an idea: one that's going to take a while to set up, but which will allow me to make a _devastating_ attack on the Malfoys. It's going to cost money, but fuck it, I'm rich. Which, now I come to think about it, is one of the notable superpowers of DC and Marvel alike. I'm not going to be cutting about dressed as a flying rodent any time soon, mind.

My imitation police cell is just transfigured wood, of course, but I like to think I've got the drab-painted brickwork, hard wooden benches and faint smell of cleaning fluid down perfectly. The whole thing is stood in the middle of one of the big expanded spaces in the cellar, itself an expansion of the cupboard under the stairs because the house didn't come with one as-built. I have a communicating mirror in my pocket linked to a dicta-quill and tape recorder outside, and the pensieve upstairs for detailed review if need be.

"_Rennervate." _Nothing happens. Okay, deep breath, focus on jolting Fawley awake. Think of coffee, energy drinks, splashes of cold water. Alarm clocks.

"_Rennervate_." Nothing. _Fucking stupid piece of shit charm._

"Fucking _RENNERVATE!_" I don't know if bellowing the charm did the trick, or I just shouted him awake, but in the moment before he turns his head to see me I toss my wand out the viewing-slot in the cell door. Don't need a weapon in here with the prisoner. If he kicks off, Adult Mal is a head taller and has about four stone more muscle to go with the natural muggle superiority in brawling. And the control spells and command words for his Dark Mark are wandless, of course.

"Sorry about that, Way," I tell him, in an affable tone, "The leper outside the door wouldn't let me bring my wand in to wake you up more gently, and I don't think he likes you." Apparently the Law Enforcement Patrol have this charming nickname from the all-coppers-are-bastards demographic.

"Fuck me, but that was a rude awakening," he says, "Feels like me heart's about to drop out me arsehole." He sits up and swings his legs over so as to be sat on the bench. "Who're you?" He's got a big sunny smile on his face. He _knows_, deep down, that I'm a friend and here to help, I just have to give him a bit of a story to rationalise it and he won't question a _thing_.

"Your defence brief," I tell him, "The lepers have got hold of some muggle ideas about suspects in custody, hence the new holding cells, and after the Sirius Black cock-up they're assigning everyone legal advice. Or, as in your case, the big man himself sent someone to make sure you keep your mouth shut and your head down until he can pull you out of the cacky."

"Have we met?" Bit of a frown.

I give him a knowing smile. "Oh, I'm sure we have, but I never gave my name and you _won't remember my face_." Tom, the cheeky fucker, taught all the marked Death Eaters the wandless, gesture-only spell that makes the Dark Mark twinge to remind the slave that he's owned. Told them it was a recognition sign. And, as well as hinting to Fawley that he's only ever seen me with a mask on, he now has a compulsion to keep my face out of his memory. If he tells me something that suggests it'd be a good idea to throw him back, I don't want him able to remember my face. "Anyway," I say, once his eyes light up at the prospect of a fellow-traveller coming to help him out of a tight spot, "Maldwyn ap Llareggub, at your service. Call me Mal, everybody does"

After a brief handshake - the Death Eaters don't have a secret handshake, a regrettable oversight on Tom's part - he says, "You know, you don't _sound_ like a sheepshagger."

I snort out a bonhomie-laced chuckle. "Well, not when I'm at work, look you, boyo. That aside, how are you feeling? A bit groggy, I should imagine, Black worked you over good and proper, but the healers we got for you do work."

He laughs with a rueful, embarrassed air. "Blood traitor he may be, but Black's a fine duellist. Did Rosier make it?"

I shake my head. "No, and Black stood on his right to a trial of his peers, so the lepers let him walk free. The Wizengamot wouldn't convict, not with Dumbledore presiding, so they decided to save time and just not charge him. Now, I've got a motion before the Council of Magical law saying that _that_ decision means you can't have a fair trial as it prejudices the issue, and the old man is working behind the scenes to get it fixed that way."

"Hah! I bet he's got Lucius running about like a blue-arsed fly!"

"Well, isn't that always the way?" I just need that one final little connection to ensure that it _is_ the Malfoys, so I trail off in a questioning tone.

"Yeah, Lucius once told me that being his father's errand-boy was how the guv'nor was teaching him the tricks of the trade, it was why he didn't mind so much being the old man's elf."

_Gotcha!_ With my main aim for this interview fulfilled, I ease myself down on the bench next to Fawley for a good, old-fashioned, fishing expedition interview.

-oOo-

Some hours later, I find Sirius in the kitchen - actual kitchen, not potion kitchen - nursing a mug of cocoa.

"How's Moony?" For some reason I can't think of Remus as Moony. The wolf, on the other hand, very much is. Sirius doesn't sleep much on full moons. Wolfsbane is all very well, but locking a good friend in a cage and watching him go through a painful transformation is no picnic.

Sirius grins. "On his back, all four paws in the air, and snoring. I've left the cage key where he can reach it when he wakes up, was about to get some shut-eye myself. How'd your chat go?"

I hold up a mokeskin bag. "Flooded the cell with bottled nitrogen until he suffocated, transfigured the remains into mince and I'll be dumping them into the channel later today. Breakfast for a whole lot of little fishies."

Sirius winces slightly. "Remind me to lay off the seafood for a while."

I shrug, and put the kettle on for some tea. What with me not wanting to get too reliant on calming potions or store up nightmares for the future, Fawley got a _much_ easier and cleaner end than most of his victims. Easier and cleaner than the Ministry or a court-martial would've given him, certainly. "Here's an interesting fact, did you know that if you get someone good and happy-daft on potions, their occlumency goes to ratshit? And if you've got 'em nailed down hard enough with the ol' psychic whammy you can pull memories out of their heads?"

"I did know that, as it happens, at least about the occlumency part. Booze can work, if your target's a lightweight, most people are too drunk to read by the time their defences come down. So mister my-shield-is-perfect did something to deserve that? Who was he, anyway?"

"Ywain Fawley, Ravenclaw class of '75, marked Death Eater, unlawful combatant and war criminal. Thought of himself as a soldier of fortune when the war ended, and yes, he was working for the Malfoys when he came after you. Once I got him talking, I went for a good rummage around his brain, and the Inferi-making skills that earned him his Mark were just the _start_. He was a _very_ naughty boy during the war, and he's been selling those skills ever since."

"Huh. Sort of remember him a bit. Goody-two-shoes type, Flitwick made him a prefect as I recall."

I snort at that. "We're talking about the school that made Tom Riddle Head Boy. Say what you want about Durmstrang, they knew how to spot a wrong 'un and expelled Grindelwald. Hogwarts'd've probably given the fucker a _job_."

"Point. Although in fairness, Dumbledore wasn't Head back then, and from things my family said on occasion, Dippet was a sympathiser if not an outright fellow-traveller. Old enough to have been part of the _original_ pure-blood movement, back when it just meant anti-muggle isolationism."

"Doesn't surprise me, you don't get movements like the Death Eaters out of nothing after all. Certainly not because some ponce in a black robe with a fancy moniker decides it's a good idea."

"Of course not, true executive power derives from a mandate from - "

"NO! Seriously, if you think I won't conjure a rolled-up newspaper, you've another think coming. And don't look at me like that, I'm saving you from becoming a Python Bore."

Sirius gives me an exaggerated sulking-little-boy face. "Spoil my fun, why don't you."

"Give it a rest. Anyway, point is that Fawley _thoroughly _earned his impending trip through a couple of hundred fish arseholes, guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and I've got a whole list of murders we can tick off on Remus's big board." Because of _course_ he was up for 'cutting off the mudbloods at source' as he thought of it. Not my family, as it happens, but I'll get there.

"He'll be pleased to hear that. He's been a bit mopey about not being able to identify the killers from the press reports alone."

"He's going to have to wait on that. He'll be getting this stuff as I transcribe it from the pensieve, but I'm going to be anonymising it. I'll pick a word at random for a source code-name."

"Let me guess, you're still convinced he's Dumbledore's man?"

"Probably not through and through, not any more, but it'll be a while before I'm happy with him not being compartmented."

"He's going to know you got at least some of this from Fawley, though."

"Point," I allow, "although we're not going to mention Fawley's name where Remus can hear. As far as he knows, the chap we captured up on the moors is outwith his job responsibilities and he shouldn't ask. You and I can bribe our way out of trouble, whereas he's a werewolf and a second-class citizen, and you _know_ the Ministry has people in it who'd refuse a bribe on principle where werewolves are concerned. He's already a compellable witness to those two jackasses disappearing, and while I did leave a little compulsion with Tiffany to keep her mouth shut beyond the date being a disaster through nobody's fault in particular, compulsions can and do break."

Sirius sighs. "I'm really not comfortable with the whole 'for your own good' line of reasoning."

"Nor should you be. It's a cover story anyway, we're keeping him compartmentalised to stop Dumbledore doing anything stupid like using the information to buy Snape's way into Tom's inner circle, and the cover story is so Dumbledore doesn't realise we're on to him. In fact, we should probably look into the Fidelius magics if we can figure out a way of working them as a group to get around the power and skill requirements. Some of this stuff is bound to be susceptible to that sort of obscuration, and if we do it judiciously we can make it look like there's no useful intelligence to be had to start with."

"You've got a mind like a corkscrew, you know that?"

"I'm a trained professional, don't try this at home. Anyway, leaving aside the vexed issue of Remus not being _entirely_ disabused of his illusions about Dumbledore, something else rather came up in the context of discovering that it's the Malfoys who want you dead. Say we wanted to put out a discreet word that we were willing to buy any and all Malfoy notes of hand for twenty sickles on the galleon, how would we do that while limiting the chances of it getting back to him?"

"What?"

"Just like I said. I want to build up a really big stock of the things."

"To what end?"

"Well, when I've got enough, and the time is right, I can absolutely _fuck_ their cash-flow. Which apparently isn't a thing in wizard accounting, because you're a lot of simple-minded primitives who think Gringott's is a real bank."

"Oi!" A short pause. "What's cash-flow and why should it be a thing in accounting?"

"Simplified somewhat, it's making sure you've got enough coin on hand to pay your bills as they fall due without having to sell assets. There're book-keeping tricks you can do to ensure you know what your liabilities are, and predict when things like notes of hand are going to be presented. And you can do a lot of that by rule-of-thumb and relying on tomorrow being much the same as yesterday, but if someone's deliberately moving against you - by, say, buying up all your notes of hand slowly over several years and then presenting them all right after your quarterly rents come in - they can ruin your perceived credit and possibly even bankrupt you, if you've been careless enough."

Sirius is visibly working through the implications. He ran away from home too young to have had to do anything with the Black family finances, but he'll have at least known how the system worked. For my part, I've got university-level and post-graduate qualifications in commercial law that included the pitfalls and hazards of this sort of thing, both in running private finances and in running a bank. Although I got _this_ idea from, of all places, a Neal Stephenson novel.

The smile on his face grows wide, and then fiendish. "You know, I think I might know some people. It doesn't have to be everyone, just a few people who have a lot of money pass through their hands and who'll see them often enough that we can be sure of getting a reasonable proportion. After all, if his notes stop coming back to Gringotts altogether, he'll get suspicious."

Sirius's idea is a helpful one, and it sparks my own thinking a bit. "It's better than that: old Abraxas ain't got long to live. What's the betting that young Lucius accepts the state of the finances as he finds them as normal, and starts getting careless with his spending?"

"He's quite the poser, it has to be said. If there ever was a wizard who exemplified the muggle concept of conspicuous consumption, it'd be him."

"So we can count on him to stick his essentials in the blender and not notice we have our hand on the switch, then?"

"Oh, I very much think we can. There's another useful benefit, too. One of the dirty little secrets of magical high society is that more often than not the reason formal duels are fought is imputations about someone's credit. Oh, they'll make up some public story about slights to their honour, but a wizard who's going very publicly bankrupt? If he wants to salvage _anything_ he's going to have to have midnight meetings with a lot of people he previously called friends."

"Huh. Doesn't surprise me, that last. There was a study of one of the more prolific duelling cultures on the non-magical side that found the same thing. Pre-civil war southern states America, where the plantations were run on season-to-season credit, they were always resorting to pistols at twenty paces over questions of money."

"Well, of course. It's how the better sort of family works, don't you know? Call us any manner of blackguard you want, but if you suggest we're not good for our notes of hand, we'll kill you. Honour's a thing, but the money's _important._"

-oOo-

I'm three days into viewing and transcribing the memories I decanted from Fawley's brain when I decide I can't stick it any longer. Source Coldstream - which codename he got after ten minutes of coin-flipping with a dictionary to generate a random word - is useful stuff, and I've already identified a few people I want a capital-W Word with over the killings of muggleborn children.

The trouble is that viewing other peoples' memories in a pensieve isn't a terribly good idea. The standard-issue model soaks up the 'flavour' - there really isn't a better word, the vocabulary for discussing this stuff just doesn't exist - of the memories you put in it. And, much like flatulence, you rarely find your own obnoxious: other people's? Not so much. If I keep this up one of two things is going to happen. The most likely is that I'm going to ruin this pensieve for my own use, unless I figure out a way to 'rinse' it with my own memories to keep the 'flavour' right. The other possibility is that Source Coldstream's mind and memory is going to affect my own.

And he's a nasty little shit, in the privacy of his own head. Coming from someone with a significant chunk of Tom Fucking Riddle spliced into his mind, that's practically a professional opinion. It _does_ occur to me that the fact that I'm still capable of making a judgment like that is a good sign, though.

What to do, though? I'm loath to ruin a good pensieve by leaving Coldstream in there long enough to get to the useful bits by random-walking through the memories. While I _have _managed to find one of the muggleborn murders that way, they're buried in a heap of other crimes, and while he knows the other scum he went out with, none of them addressed any of the others by actual name. Searching through memories for faces _is_ possible, but my skills with the pensieve aren't up to it yet. Clear, consistent, guided visualisation is key, and it takes hundreds of hours of practice to even do it, never mind get good at it. It's a lot easier to search for names or kinds of events, or to follow chains of association between the memories you have in the thing.

What I need is a list of all the names of the Death Eaters. It's hard enough to cope with just Coldstream: if I decant the brains of every one we capture alive, the task is going to become too onerous to cope with. It's time, I think, to bite the bullet. Once I've put my body to bed - early, because seven-year-olds need a lot more sleep than grown-ups - I pop up to the upper atmosphere. The view is spectacular - the light pollution is ten miles below me - and I'm not going to be disturbed up here. The only aircraft that get this high are spy planes and weather balloons, both of which are thankfully rare over Surrey.

_Right, Tom, I want all the times you applied the Dark Mark_.

When I come to, the eastern sky is starting to lighten, and I know some _very _disturbing things about how deeply Tom managed to compromise magical society. And one _particularly_ disturbing thing about the claims of magical enthrallment the blighters made after Lily blew him up.

**Yes, I was quite proud of that one.**

_Fuck's sake, really?_

**Did you miss me? Apparently you've got enough of me on board that I get to be a voice in your head, now**_**.**_

_Well, it's not like I haven't dealt with intrusive thoughts my entire pre-mortem life. And you're still nothing but an epiphenomenon._

**You hope so, at any rate. It's not like you're not tempted to take over the world even when I wasn't able to talk to you**_**.**_

_And unlike you, I might actually succeed at it. Trouble is, smart enough to do the thing is also smart enough to know it's more trouble than it's worth. Exercising a bit of a veto here and there, sabotaging the villains all quiet-like. More than that and you're stuck with the admin._

**Unambitious**_**.**_

_Sane, sensible ambitions._

**Like that idle moment when you realised you might be around in the 41st Millennium and that you could probably do a better job than the Emperor?**

Which, yes, was an idle thought I amused myself with. _Well, he was a fictional character written for the specific purpose of plunging his setting into eternal war. The line between Grim Darkness and Blithering Stupidity is not always a clear one. As your career demonstrated._

**There's no need to be insulting.**

_Speak as I find, Tom, I speak as I find. So why didn't you do all the death eaters that way?_ I've no idea how I know this, but conversing with Voice-Tom will prompt 'him' to use unabsorbed memories to augment the one I have of an initiate kneeling, shaven headed, with scarified and tattooed runes and symbols all across her scalp.

**He was afraid she'd run off with some mudblood like her sister did. Keeping her dosed with Amortentia wasn't reliable and her obsession was making her, as he put it, weird. Giving her the same effect as a permanent rune-spell etched into her skin made it reliable, and I was able to direct the obsession toward myself. If I'd made more than one like her, they'd have fought each other for the position of most loyal, and not stopped until there was only one left. Obsessive devotion is tricky like that, you can't let them think there's anyone who's their equal in your sight. Pity. I **_**did**_ **try and find a solution, but That Mudblood blew me up before I got very far.**

_Once you get past the superficial manipulations you're a complete incompetent with people, Tom. _He already _had_ the solution when he came up with the means to separate the obsession and the devotion elements of the Amortentia magic in the course of turning it into a rune-spell. Devotion to the group, obsession with pleasing the leader: cult leaders throughout history have done it the non-magical way through various means and methods. If it wasn't for the well-known tendency of mind-affecting magic to make its subjects seriously mentally ill, I'd think it quite the innovation. No point having devoted, mutually-supporting slaves if they're all madder than a hat full of arseholes.

The fact that my internal monologue now has Tom Riddle as my own personal peanut gallery is, I decide, one of those secrets best kept by never telling anyone. And I've got literal decades of practise in ignoring intrusive thoughts, after all.

-oOo-

Remus is away for the day visiting PR companies and local newspapers to get back issues and to set up more monitoring service accounts, so it's safe to talk about more sensitive topics. "Sirius?"

"Yes?"

"I've eaten some more of Tom's memories, although if we're talking about them to Remus he's now known as Source Paraclete, very hush-hush, no clues as to his identity. You know, toward that idea of drawing up a hit-list, see if we couldn't thin the herd a bit, Coldstream's memories only identified a few of the buggers before I got sick of wading through his filth, not to mention the risk of ruining my pensieve and those things aren't cheap. Thing is, you know how they all claimed they were enthralled, bewitched, under the Imperius and what-have-you? There's one of them that _actually was_. And I doubt anyone's going to believe it and even if they do I don't think the method the fucker used actually _counts_, legally, wizarding law is just flat out _wrong_ on the subject of love potions and related magics. We're probably going to have to do a jailbreak and fake a death."

"Who're we talking about, here?"

"Your cousin Bellatrix."

"Oh. _Fuck._"

"Yeah. I've sort of got a plan for the jailbreak since Tom actually prepared for the possibility of breaking his followers out, we're going to need to refine it as we go to remove the more murdery bits, but basically we're going to need hang-gliders, lessons in how to fly them, an inflatable liferaft, draught of living death, a _lot_ of practice with the Patronus charm, _learning_ the Patronus charm in my case, a more portable cylinder of nitrogen gas than the one with my welding gear, some plastic carrier bags and a shitload of white phosphorus. Oh, and I'm going to have to see a guy at the British Museum about access to a particular manuscript."

"What's the manuscript for?" That's right Sirius, ignore the shopping list of bizarre shit and get confused by the academic portion of the matter.

"Nuclear-option curse-breaking. Tom seemed to think it was the only thing that would break the spell he used without killing the poor woman. And since the final incantation in the rite is the old Aramaic for 'as I speak so I destroy', which we all know and love as the Killing Curse, I want to be doing this from _primary sources_."

"What?"

"Which bit are you stuck on?" I'm finding this _far_ too amusing.

"The Killing Curse as a cursebreaker spell in particular, but, you know, all of it."

"One of those little historical oddities. It was invented by an obscure little religious-magical sect in what was then called Judaea called the Essenes, mystics as well as mages as so many were in that part of the world back then. Very much about the purity and the cleansing, they made a few advances in curse-breaking that are still used, at least as to the basic principles, to this day. Anyway, they devised this whole rite of purification and cleansing that cleans off all the magic from a person or thing, with a preparation and targeting stage and a series of spells at the end that nullifies everything you targeted in the first half. It's fiddly and time consuming and can't be done in the field with a wand, so it's largely disused nowadays, but there are only a few magics it can't undo, provided you can sufficiently name and describe them during the rite."

"How'd the killing curse come out of that?" Sirius is intrigued. He might _act_ the airheaded playboy, but he's as much a sucker for an interesting academic titbit as Remus and I are.

"Some nasty little scrote in medieval times discovered that if you cast the final spell from that rite with intent to kill and use a wand to aim it at someone, it cleanses the life right out of their body. Hence the killing curse." Tom was amused by that little detail: I was rather less impressed. It somehow seems worse to pervert a good and useful spell than to straight up invent something nasty like the inventor of the Cruciatus did.

"Huh. Never knew that. Can we just go back to the bit where we're risking life, limb and liberty on my cousin's behalf? Because while she might not be legally or morally responsible for what she did as an adult, she was a right little cow as a child, so Andi tells me, and not much better as a teenager that I can recall. Which, sure, isn't grounds for sending her to Azkaban, but it doesn't exactly motivate me to break her out. Can we not, say, try getting her conviction overturned?"

I stop and think about that one. "What evidence would we lead, though? I mean, 'oh, I devoured a simulacrum of the Dark Lord's soul and I have his memory of what he did to the poor woman, on top of the filthy brew of potions her husband stuffed down her to keep her from running off like her sister did' has the benefit of being _true_ but it also gives us kind of a problem or two going forward. Not least of which is publicly encouraging the rest of the Death Eaters with the news that he's not all the way dead yet, while at the same time handing ammunition to the ones that'll want to deny his return when he does because they'll be able to insist that what I ate was the last of him. While Dumbledore quietly does his nut over the possibility that I'm at risk of turning into a new version of Tom, this time with _upgrades_. Plus, if we set the precedent of getting people out of Azkaban on mind-control defences they didn't raise at trial, where's it going to stop?"

Sirius nods. He's _also_ aware that we're walking a fine line vis a vis not provoking too much mayhem before we've built up our capabilities to deal with it. "So that won't work. I still don't see what we owe her. Not to sound callous or anything, but breaking someone out of Azkaban is a bit much to be doing purely on the principle of the thing." He does have a point, unfortunately. And his perspective on Azkaban is as a prisoner: Tom researched the security measures from the outside, whence they look a _lot_ less impressive.

"Well, I was coming to that. You know that note I told you to open on your mother's death if I died first?"

He nods. One of Dumbledore's notable fuckups was not ensuring continuity of action despite knowing considerably in advance that he was going to die. So we've a safe full of notes of actions-on for the others to open in the event of our deaths, disappearances, or what-have-you. Obviously we're too early in history for browser histories that need to be deleted, but that will come in time. As it is, it's full of stuff we're keeping compartmentalised from each other - mostly me from Sirius and Remus, my situation being what it is - but which needs to be preserved. A world that includes mind-reading and actually effective interrogation drugs is one where you have to have information control in mind at all times, we're just being a bit more sensible about it than Dumbledore and his "you must trust me" attitude.

"Well," I go on, "that's all about an item, which I'm carefully not naming or describing, that's in the house at Grimmauld Place, that we need to destroy. Big deal. _Biggest_ deal, it's important to Tom, for reasons that are in my actions-on envelopes. It's part of a collection, and I _think_ there might be another one like it in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts. Now, if we had someone with access to that vault and we earned their gratitude by, I don't know, busting them out of Azkaban and breaking the mind-control spell they're under?"

"Okay, _that_ I get. What're we going to do if she says no? If it turns out she's still a loyal Death Eater after the mind control comes off?"

Got to admit I hadn't thought that far ahead, but there's an obvious answer. "Put the mind control back on, and proceed with the assistance of our new slave."

That earns a snort from Sirius. "And, when we're done, turn over a corpse after we heroically bring down the notorious fugitive Bellatrix Lestrange. And if she comes on board?"

I shrug. "We can offer her a fair few options once she's emptied that vault and turned over the one item we want from it. Not out of the question that what she'll want is a painless suicide, after all, she was made to do some _outrageously_ fucked-up things, but we can set her up with a new identity and turn her loose if she'll agree to a magically-binding contract of non-interference. Ideally, we recruit her going forward. I'm holding on to the hope that under the mind-control she's more like Andi than she's not, but she's a mine of intelligence and a very talented witch even if we have to put up with standard-issue Black Family Bullshit."

"Okay," Sirius says after a moment of silence, "subject to a reasonable plan, I'm in. I'm guessing Moony's not being included?"

"Yeah. Since this whole proceeding is wildly illegal to start with and I'm thinking we can take the opportunity to do for a couple of the more dangerous Death Eaters while we're there, I think he needs to not be exposed, for the reasons we've been over already."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

The wind-up is a popular recreation in all the nations of the British Isles. The aim of the game is to convince your mark of some utterly outrageous proposition, with extra points awarded for deadpan sincerity: I've seen people convinced that ostriches gave blue milk, that the welsh language has no word for fun, and that the royal family has a collection of jewelled dildos dating back to the reign of Queen Anne.

This chapter is set a few years before the Italy hosts the 1990 World Cup and boosts the mass audience for opera in Britain. (They included performances in the opening and closing ceremonies.) Still, even at this date there are four opera companies serving the UK, three or four semi-pro outfits, and a handful of regular festivals. Measured against that, one part-time opera company for the entire wizarding world is actually _more_ provision than the equivalent population of muggles. The tiny population of the magical world has _implications_ for their cultural richness, or rather lack thereof.

I may have implied that Birmingham is some kind of barbarian wasteland, utterly bereft of any kind of refinement or culture. This is an unfair stereotype of the city that gave the world Ozzy Ozbourne.

The Flower Duet from Lakme, by Delibes, is a lovely piece of music and the soundtrack to one of my personal Patronus memories. There are several excellent renditions of it on Youtube.

Maldwyn ap Llareggub is about as plausible a welsh name as Crawford FitzLlakcuf is an English one. Bonus points if you get the reference.

Python Bores are an affliction, really they are. The Pythons were funny, groundbreaking, ahead of their time, and I've long been a fan. This does NOT mean that I want to hear their stuff quoted verbatim at every possible prompt or occasion. Every other famous comedy, you get allusions and pastiches, Python just seems to get regurgitated.

"Note of hand" is how promissory notes - one of the historical roots of the modern cheque - used to be colloquially described. And suggesting a gentleman's note of hand wasn't good _would_ see him having a friend call on you about a dawn meeting: if he didn't, his credit would evaporate. The study Mal references I _have _actually read, but long enough ago that I can't remember the author, title, or where I found it. Anyone who can refresh my memory in review/comment/private message will earn my effusively-expressed gratitude.

The Neal Stephenson novel Mal refers to is Cryptonomicon. If you've read it, you know the bit I mean. If you haven't, and read it on my recommendation, you can't miss it, it's in the opening chapters.

It's a common thing in fanfic to use pensieves to settle all kinds of evidentiary and communication difficulties. This doesn't happen in the books for obvious (not necessarily good) storytelling reasons, so I've come up with an in-universe explanation why not: they're expensive, difficult to use, and can be ruined by putting other peoples' memories in them too much and too often. I've expanded the capability beyond 'you can view your memories in it' too, because having _only_ that function is a bit weak for what's obviously a rare and arcane device. There are various search functions that take skill to use, and some other capabilities that I'll introduce when they come up.

Finally, your fanfic recommendation: That Universe Over There, by Mytimeconsumingsidehobby on AO3 (ALL the shenanigans!) and We Shall All Perish If The Dark Lord Comes by basketofnovas, also on AO3, which is a complete run-down of Bellatrix Lestrange's appearances in the books, and food for thought vis a vis the usual fanfic characterisation of her as a raving, fanatical nutcase.


	24. No plan, but planning is everything

DISCLAIMER: Is there a whole world of magical traditions and folklore and history that could have informed the Potterverse better than the sources that actually got used? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

For the few of you who got it (and the one who mentioned it in comments) yes, "Paraclete" actually was the random word I got from the dictionary for "Mal's Shoulder Devil" as that one reviewer put it. I nearly rejected it as being too near the knuckle (even though I was laughing like a drain from the moment the last coin toss decided the matter) but my morbid curiosity about possible audience reaction won out in the end. Also, random processes like that are open to influences which have a sense of humour all of their own and it doesn't pay to thwart them … meanwhile, in better news, things have subsided on the home front enough that I have a buffer of unpublished writing again.

* * *

CHAPTER 24

"_Okay," Sirius says after a moment of silence, "subject to a reasonable plan, I'm in. I'm guessing Moony's not being included?"_

"_Yeah. Since this whole proceeding is wildly illegal to start with and I'm thinking we can take the opportunity to do for a couple of the more dangerous Death Eaters while we're there, I think he needs to not be exposed, for the reasons we've been over already."_

-oOo-

"Mal, why hang-gliders?" Having to keep discussions to times when Remus is out of the building, or at least thoroughly engrossed in his work, is hampering the jail-break planning, but we're managing. Remus is at Gringotts, picking up some contract documents Barchoke wants me to look over. They're apparently too sensitive for owl post, so they're coming via werewolf courier. I can't be too sarcastic about the excess of caution, the goblins have been sneaking past the wizards for centuries at this point and you don't build a record like that by being slap-dash.

Sirius's question is a good one, though, and deserves an answer. "Magical flight suppression charms start about five miles out from the shore of the island. Regular flight works fine, though, unless you're a post owl. Or even a regular owl, the spell is apparently that specific. Nobody tries to put the messenger bird charms on seagulls or similar." Which they totally should, because here in Britain gulls are ubiquitous all the way inland, as well as being smarter than owls and about thirty to fifty times as vicious. Cheaper, too, as they can and will eat literal rubbish, unlike the fussy diet of raptors.

"Can't we go by boat? Only I've looked up hang-gliding and the amount of instruction you need. I sort of weighed up the likely conditions relative to the amount of skill we'll be able to pick up in any reasonable time, and, uh, well, _yikes_."

"Well, if you can make the case for refining that part of the plan in a way that gets around the limitations, sure. Can't use a boat, though, we need to make a covert entrance on the roof of the main fortress. There's an alarm charm on incoming boat traffic: we can leave that way, but we can't arrive that way. Not to mention I don't fancy trying to scale the walls with Dementors in the mix."

"What was Tom's plan?"

"Fly over the anti-flight charm, about ten thousand feet apparently because brooms don't go that high, and then fall through it, using the _arresto momentum_ charm just before he splats. He'd use his own flying trick if there wasn't an anti-flight jinx in play. It's how he made it look like he apparated through even the strongest jinxes. Nobody noticed a disillusioned wanker plummeting from the sky, all they saw was him appearing in the cloud of black mist that he'd conjure as he landed. Hand it to the fucker, he had a real flair for showmanship." I'd discounted doing the same, of course. I haven't got nearly the confidence in my skills that Tom acquired, even if using charms under pressure weren't a non-starter for me.

"Huh. Yeah, that'd do it. Do you know how to do the flying trick?"

"The theory. For some reason I can't get it to actually work, which I'm hoping is just a psychological block that I can get over with a bit of practise." The psychological block is a bit of a fear of heights and flying. Neither to the point of what you'd actually call a phobia, but definitely things I'm uncomfortable about.

"Wouldn't mind learning that trick myself, although we'll have to be careful not to get spotted doing it. I mean, we could claim we figured it out ourselves, but His Lordship would want to know how we got one of his best-kept secrets and, well, I don't know what he'd do. Nothing I'd care for, I imagine. Anyway, unless there's something about hang-gliding that I'm not getting, I don't think we can get good enough fast enough. What other methods are there for getting in there without using magical flight?"

"How about learning to parachute? Means a bit more of a difficult escape, since we can't glide off the roof and straight to the water, but no reason we shouldn't abseil down and walk to the shore so long as we stay on the side away from the guardhouse. But I'm pretty sure parachuting's easier than piloting a glider, they teach squaddies to do it after all."

"I'd prefer that. Although where are we going to get an aeroplane?" I can see Sirius picturing himself as a paratrooper in a war movie. Literally: he's not occluding the mental image.

"Don't need one. Apparate straight up and then across until we get to the right point to deploy chutes. Now I come to think about it, we've a lot more leeway with that, since the apparition jinx doesn't extend nearly as far up or out. And yes, apparating up into the air is possible, it just takes practise. Likewise with apparating in distance increments without having a mark to aim for." It's not even terribly difficult: the focus on Destination absolutely _can_ be expressed as a distance offset from your start point, you just have to have a very clear idea of how far your chosen distance actually feels like when you're in apparition transit. Tom didn't fly long distances, he just got up to altitude and apparated across the sky. Gave him a ridiculous effective speed, faster than portkeying over anything but the shortest distances. His skydiving trick meant he could ignore magical protections at his destination.

"Parachutes it is, then. So, are we doing this as The Longest Day, or A Bridge Too Far?"

"The Longest Day. The good guys won that one, or at least didn't end up cut off, surrounded and fighting off overwhelming odds. Although what we're doing is more James Bond than War Movie, but you haven't started watching those yet."

Sirius snorts his amusement at my reasoning. "I actually read a couple of the books, back before, you know. Back before." He shuts down, briefly. I let him take a moment: they're getting less frequent, but I suspect he's always going to have them. When he's collected himself, he gets a thoughtful look. "You know, that made me think. Well, more of a bit of a mental ramble really, what with the whole James-Bond-Licensed-to-Kill thing. I was thinking, how are we deciding which of the blighters we're going to kill? It's going to cause a serious to-do if we just slaughter the lot of them."

"Yeah, I'd been thinking that over a bit, too. What we want is something that won't cause a huge political fuss, over and above a couple of prisoners escaping and turning up dead a few days later. What I was thinking is dimethyl mercury, transfigured into syrup, and injected into liqueur chocolates. It de-transfigures in the prisoner's belly, and it can take months to kill. There was a famous case where a scientist got a few drops on her hand, didn't realise it could go through her gloves, and carried on. She didn't even realise she'd been poisoned until three months later, by which time it was too late to save her, and she was something like a year dying despite all they tried to do to save her. Since prisoners die all the time in Azkaban, nobody's going to ask questions. Wizards don't make industrial use of mercury, so the healers at St. Mungos don't have institutional experience with the signs." Naturally, I'll be working with the stuff via telekinesis inside a sealed chamber, because _brrrrr_. And apparently the famous case - about which I can remember only the horror story - hasn't happened yet. The stuff is available to purchase, albeit with a sheet of warnings and disclaimers that runs to a couple of dozen pages, so I don't even have to learn how to synthesise it.

"How on earth do you know this sort of thing? More importantly, how do we get the prisoners to eat the chocolates?" Sirius is looking at me funny. I don't know why, it's not like I went with my first idea of sneaking into Porton Down and nicking a bucket of V-series nerve agent. That would have killed the investigating aurors too, if they didn't know to vanish it before getting close.

I shrug. "I had an old school friend who went into biomedical research. We kept in touch, correspondence mostly, and she liked to tell horror stories. As for getting the chocolate into the prisoners, we're going to lie to the other prisoners who see us anyway, so a bit of a story about how we didn't need all the chocolate we brought can be part of that. Some of them won't trust it, of course, but they'll dump the contraband because they know the place will soon be swarming with aurors. That'll get rid of the evidence, and randomise the deaths in a way that'll have the DMLE unable to find a pattern, if they even think to look."

"Sometimes you frighten me, Mal. Whatever. Pettigrew doesn't get one. Let the rat suffer."

-oOo-

It's the after-party for Daisy's christening: the boys have invited friends around and they're playing at Mediaeval Men At Arms with the wooden swords and shields I made for them, and pretty much everyone female is cooing over the star of the show. She, for her part, is focussed on trying to extract her toes from under the cute little christening dress so she can suck on them. Vernon and a couple of the neighbourhood dads are cheering the boys on in their mock battle, as is the vicar. Who, for a C of E clergyman, is a decent sort, and could probably top Vernon's Japanese Golfer joke if his wife wasn't on the premises. Remus and Sirius are standing with me at the barbecue, as are Ripper and Skriker. Why Skriker is grokeing alongside Ripper I have no idea, since he can't actually eat any of the stuff I'm cooking. Still, both dogs are being Good Boys. Apparently the presence of a werewolf, a grim, a legilimens with a knack for dog-handling, and a massive amount of meat is all that is required to make Ripper mind his doggy manners. I reckon if I crack and throw him a morsel or two he'll fall to worshipping me as a god.

"You know, we should've suggested inviting Dumbledore to this," Sirius says, gesturing around the back garden of Number Four with his beer bottle.

Fortunately I wasn't doing anything with the barbecue when Sirius came out with that gem. When I collect myself from the fit of sniggering, "I can just see me trying to sell that to Vernon and Petunia. Doubt Dumbledore would've cleared his diary for it, either. Last time he was here he got punched in the face, tied to a chair, and given a proper bollocking."

Remus frowns at the disrespect to the Great and Powerful Dumbledore, but doesn't say anything.

"Well, it'd have been nice to rub his nose in how much better a job you made of Harry's living situation than he managed."

I snort. "He'd not accept anything of the sort. He knows exactly what he did, exactly what he cost Harry, and he doesn't strike me as the sort to deal constructively with guilt. He'd start throwing around specious accusations of dark magic. Has done, come right to it. Plus, if that nasty case of projection he's got starts acting up, he'd be making sly digs about underhanded dealing and manipulation." I'm fairly sure I know where Sirius is going with this, we have discussed the matter. It took trips in the pensieve to view my memory of beating Dumbledore up and his memory of the Gryffindor boys' dorm circa 1974, but he got the message about how important it is. It took a deal of prompting before he remembered that Lily wrote to him and mentioned that Albus had the Cloak, from which it was a short step to him grasping that Dumbledore having even _one_ of those legendary artefacts is bad news, never mind two. The plan was to build a 'visions and divinations' cover story and nudge Remus into acting as our stalking horse, but Sirius has decided to improvise a bit.

"Probably. Huh. Hundred thousand galleons, though. And that's not the half of it, actual heirlooms gone, just like that. All poor Harry got was the blanket out of his cot."

Sirius has agreed to not get on Remus's case about not looking in on Harry. This sounds perilously close to the line, so I shoot him a sharp look that says _watch it, mate_. This is not the time and place for these two to blow up at each other, which injudicious needling could well bring on. That said, I can try and steer this back into the vicinity of the plan we actually had. "We know where most of it ended up, at any rate," I say, keeping my tone light, "The embezzlers Dumbledore turned the estate over to, well, they kept quite comprehensive records of their thieving. Have to say, there didn't seem to be anything in there that jumped out as an heirloom."

"Not James's cloak?"

"There was 'clothing, miscellaneous' that they disposed of in the shonky shops of Knockturn Alley, so if it was in that lot I'm not hopeful of getting it back." There probably were some cloaks in among that lot, so I can keep my face straight as I say this without much effort.

"If Sirius means James's invisibility cloak," Remus puts in, "that wouldn't have been in with a job lot. And the invisibility will have faded by now anyway."

"Ah, no." Sirius says, taking a moment to give Ripper's ears a scratch. Ripper doesn't know why he finds Sirius so fascinating, he just does. "That was the thing about James's cloak. It never wore out. It was his father's before him. Practically unique as invisibility cloaks go, that one. Probably worth more than everything else the Potters had put together, not that you'd sell a thing like that."

I fuss over the grill to cover up the wave of relief that runs through me. It was probably very unfair of me to worry that Sirius would blab about the whole Hallows thing - we're both more than a little sceptical about them being artefacts of Death Personified - but they are special, unique items. A certain amount of care when talking about them is warranted, and Sirius _can_ be a bit inclined to overlook proper procedure.

"You think someone out there has it?"

"If they do, it didn't go through the administration of the Potter estate," I say, "But if we can get a look at its distinguishing features in the pensieve - you both saw it while you were at school?"

They both nod.

"Well then," I go on, "unique item with a known history and distinguishing marks? Between the strides I'm making in divination research and a computer to brute-force the arithmancy with," A brand spanking new Sun 3, which my two wizard housemates treat with superstitious dread and I regard as shockingly primitive, "I dare say we can find who has it now. And then, ah, '_negotiate'_ the return of it with the threat of lengthy and very public litigation. I mean, the publicity alone if it gets out that someone stole one of the Boy-Who-Lived's family heirlooms?"

Sirius chuckles darkly. "It's the sort of thing I'd ask Grandfather to help with. He's been trying to butter me up since I got out of Azkaban, and it's the sort of cause he'd gladly open the family blackmail files to help with."

"You two should stop machinating," Remus observes, "Petunia's coming over."

Petunia spends a minute or two doing the good hostess bit, expressing relief over getting away from everyone fussing over Daisy and complimenting me on how the barbecue is smelling.

"Have you been in the new greenhouse yet today?" She asks, "That thing you did with the copper pipes is working wonderfully. I've got a test planting of tomatoes and cucumbers, but I'm confident the next thing to go in those beds will be the herbs you want."

The copper pipes thing is a bit of heat management magic. Fill a copper pipe with lead and you've got a heat sink with a _lot_ of capacity. From an engineering point of view it's a bit rubbish due to the difficulty of getting heat in and out. Magic, however, removes that difficulty and engraving runes on copper is dead easy. It's needed because even a space-expanded greenhouse has a problem with heat management: it usually has to be vented so you don't cook the plants on hot days, but too much venting and you might as well not have a greenhouse at all.

Magical heat control charms can be, often _are_, temperamental. Rune-spells that just move heat from place to place according to a short list of rules? _Much_ more reliable and less power-intensive. Hence: magic heat sinks, so rather than waste the excess heat by venting it, you store it by magically sucking it in during the day and letting it out at night. Makes the greenhouse more efficient _and_ extends the season over which it's useful. There's a rack of tubes along each wall, and a couple of portable sets that can be put around plants that need particular temperatures. Magic and engineering, each leveraging the other's strengths.

Remus has a bit of a smile at that. In return for being Petunia's wizard-on-call for her magical greenhouse, he's getting the botanicals he needs for his Wolfsbane more or less free. "I popped in earlier, Petunia," he says, "and the tomatoes _do_ look promising. Who knew that a touch of dragon muck in the compost would do so much good?"

"I couldn't really put it into words," she says, "Somehow I just _feel_ what's right or wrong about soil and plants. My mother was the same."

Sirius and Remus exchange a look. I've been banging on about magic being a continuum rather than three separate boxes for muggle, squib and mage, and I just _know_ they're bracing themselves for how insufferable I'm going to be over this. Not that they disagreed with me at any point, but Remus in particular advocated a cautious approach until we had evidence collected.

"The service was quite lovely," Sirius says, changing the subject, "and thank you for the invitation." Sirius is being polite, of course: a village church christening isn't 'lovely' so much as it's about the comfort of old-fashioned ritual. Not that either Sirius or Remus would have known much about it. While you'd search long and hard to find a magical atheist, what with daily involvement with the supernatural, the nearest most British mages get to actual _religion_ is a vague self-identification as christian and recognising the major holidays. They're more alike to the non-magical community than they know, at least in Britain; organised religion has fewer regular participants than angling.

There _was_ a time when Europe's magicals played their part in the religious life of their communities, to the point where mages who took holy orders tended to end up as bishops, the wizard-healer St. Mungo being only the most famous example. Around about the renaissance, however, christianity reversed itself hard, starting with the newly-minted protestant sects, and took to equating magic with devil-worship.

"Speaking of matters religious," I put in, "Is Winky okay? I know she's nervous of clergy, and I don't get the sense she's about." Not least because I'm being permitted to cook on the premises. The lady of the house and her elf do the cooking, as far as Winky is concerned, not some brute with a pile of meat and a charcoal grill. Vernon and the boys occasionally get their way on the subject of Uncle Mal's barbecue. It is _always_ met with an air of resigned, grudging acquiescence to the temporary departure from capital-S Standards. As a Good Elf, though, she'd never be so rude as to _say_ anything. So I'm sure I just _imagined_ seeing Winky out of the corner of my eye, smacking a rolling pin into her palm while glaring indignantly.

"She's having some quiet time in her nest in the attic," Petunia says, "While I've assured her that the Reverend Whicker won't try and exorcise her, she doesn't want to take any chances." The various local legends of the clergy banishing hobs and brownies with prayers and psalms and trapping them in wells and similar may or may not have a grain of truth in them. They do, however, feature heavily in the oral history of the elves themselves. Winky's worried over nothing, of course. I've put enough muggle-worthiness rune-parchments about the place that she could probably have danced a can-can across the lawn and not raised any eyebrows.

As to the likely winner of any fight between the good Reverend and nineteen inches of unyielding elfin censoriousness, my money's on the elf every time.

"Psst! Uncle Mal!" Harry's tugging at my sleeve and trying to discreetly point across the garden.

Daisy is in her bouncer chair, under a parasol, with Dudley and his friends taking turns to play peek-a-boo with her by way of change of pace from reenacting medieval battles. She's giggling and cooing and generally being a cute baby. Which I think we're all glad of, because grumpy smelly sticky babies are altogether not what's wanted on heartwarming family occasions like this.

This, however, is quite clearly not what Harry feels we should pay attention to. All around Daisy's bouncer, the grass has grown and flowers have shot up around her. She clearly likes flowers: she's got an unnaturally-tall dandelion grasped in her left fist and is trying her level best to get it in her mouth. On a lawn that was mown within an inch of its life only yesterday. Nobody's paying it any mind, of course. The muggleworthiness runes I put up for Winky's security work just as well for a horticulturally-minded baby having her first bout of accidental magic.

"That you, Harry?" Have to say, it doesn't _look_ like Harry's usual style.

Harry shakes his head. "I was in the loo when it happened."

I take a quick look for Petunia's reaction. There's a little whiteness about the pursed lips, a certain fixity of stare.

_All hands! Man Damage Control Stations!_

"You know it's not going to be like you and Lily, Petunia," I say in the most soothing tone I know, "Dudley's already comfortable with magic and has his heart set on science and alchemy, and okay it's too late for another godparent but magical godparents are a more secular thing and you've a choice of three right here -"

I'm cut off mid-soothe as she fixes me with a haughty stare. "That's not the problem."

"Oh?"

"That little _madam_ has just grown _dandelions_ on _my lawn_."

That, right there? _Peak_ Petunia. Sirius is cracking up despite his best efforts to hold it together. Harry has both hands clamped over his mouth and wide, wide eyes.

"Not to worry," Remus says, "when everyone's gone, well, I'll vanish the dandelions."

"You can do that?"

He shrugs. "When I agreed to help in the greenhouse, I brushed up on my herbology charms."

-oOo-

It took a lot of back-and-forth over the telephone and in correspondence to get a meeting at the British Museum. The keepers and curators and staff here are busy: they have the loot and plunder of an entire empire to catalogue and preserve. And - I imagine - a constant stream of academics and researchers in and out the place like fiddlers' elbows. Not to mention the leavening of what we might genteelly call 'people with firmly fixed ideas'. Wouldn't do to call them crackpots, you might forget and call them that to their faces.

Lacking academic credentials and without the backing of an actual institution, my request to visit, view and photograph a particular accession number seems to have been quite a long way down the priority queue of the British Museum's Department of the Middle East. It took them four weeks to answer the letter, even with my up-front offer to cover the costs of accommodating me with a hearty donation to the museum's funds on top. After that it was a fortnight of telephone tennis to get an appointment. Which was another six weeks before they could fit me in. Only to be expected, I suppose, they're probably booked up solid with desperate doctoral candidates fighting for the appointments left over after the likes of the Regius Professors have hogged all the good slots that leave time for a leisurely lunch.

Even after I arrive on the appointed day, a polite ten minutes early, I end up having a long wait. I entertain myself with visions of academics fighting vicious hand-to-hand duels for scarce Curator time, bludgeoning each other with heavy tomes and rare artefacts. That only goes so far, and I end up reading every piece of printed matter left within arm's reach in the area I was directed to wait in. The days when you could carry a smart phone full of books and time-passing games can't return soon enough for my tastes.

My increasingly desperate attempts to cope with the boredom are interrupted by the appearance of a chap with what appears to be an auburn bird's nest stapled to the front of his head. The presence of round wire-rimmed glasses in the middle of the explosion of hair suggests a face behind it, but really the only feature my mind is able to grasp is a Beard that positively _requires_ a capital B.

"Mr. Reynolds?" I nod in acknowledgement that he's found me, "Marvellous. Well, step this way, sorry about the wait, something of a kerfuffle about who was the right person to see you, as you might imagine we get all sorts in here. Hah! We have all sorts _working_ here, myself not the least of them. Just in here, please, we can discuss your request. Tea?"

"Oh, yes please," I say, a little bemused. Things have taken something of a turn here and I'm not sure how to address the disparity between what I expect and what I'm actually presented with. There's something about the Beard, too, but it's not coming to me.

He leads me along a short corridor into an office that's a clone of pretty much every academic workspace ever. Walls lined with bookcases, desk piled high with more books and paperwork, framed photo of wife and kids, and rather irritatingly, no nameplate on door or desk.

While he's attending to the electric kettle and teapot on one of the side tables, I decide to address my present confusion. "I was, ah, expecting to meet with a Ms. Cassidy. Now, one doesn't like to jump to conclusions, but …."

The Beard has turned to regard me with some amusement. "You were expecting someone prettier?"

I grin back. "Oh, far from it. What you have there is a _handsome _Beard, one for the books by anyone's measure. Just, you know, not the sort of distinguishing feature one expects on the face of someone that signs their name 'Mary.'"

"Not as a rule, no. And just so you know, Mary does not in fact have a beard. Unless she's grown one in the last five minutes. No, now _normally_ you'd have seen Mary about this sort of thing, Second Temple era Aramaic is very much her thing, but she didn't actually realise exactly what you were asking for until she went to get it, since you asked for it by accession number rather than name or description. At which point she realised she wasn't the one you needed to talk to and went looking for me, hence the slight delay. Sorry, seem to have got the pleasantries in the wrong order, Irving Finkel, at your service."

He holds out a hand, which I shake, choking down my surprise. I actually know this chap from the future, I've just never seen him looking this _young_. He has, bluntly, been on the telly. Or will be, time travel tenses strike again. "Oh!" I say, hoping to cover up the moment I've just had that _totally doesn't involve rampant fanboyism_, "Aren't you all about the cuneiform?"

"I am, yes," he says, raising an eyebrow that is not yet as magnificently bushy as I know it will become, "you seem rather unusually well informed, Mr. Reynolds?"

"Ah, well, yes. I got bored while waiting and read the internal telephone directory that someone left out in the waiting area." Which has the advantage of being true, and I _did_ recognise his name when I read it. I just wasn't expecting to meet him, and my mental picture of him has him white-bearded and _old_. This far back in history, he's in his thirties, early forties at the outside.

"Oh dear. Sorry again about that, it took Mary a while to find me, and then we had to find someone to stand in for me as the duty officer, we get a steady stream of members of the public with artefacts they want to know about. Usually rubbish, of course, but I had a chap come in last year with a tablet his father brought back from the middle east with an _extraordinarily_ complete text from the Atrahasis story."

"The flood myth?" I'm cracking on that I'm sort of amateurishly informed, but I have in fact read the book that Dr. Finkel will be writing about that very tablet in a bit over twenty years' time. And seen the TV show based on it.

"The very same! Marvellous find, but he wasn't for leaving it with me and alas, the Trustees frown on clubbing people unconscious and taking their things. I don't doubt I'll see it again, though, I impressed the importance of it on him."

We yarn on a bit over tea, and I spend some time selling an image of myself as a rich dilettante with no day job. Indulging interests on which to spend the interest, as the saying has it. Early purifying rites and rituals as part of a history of science as it pertains to the precursors to the germ theory of disease. It is, as a reason for wanting the text I'm after, _plausible_.

Once I've finished setting out my stall vis a vis cover story, he gives me a level look. "The thing is, you see, and I'm afraid it really is quite tiresome, there are certain items here in the Museum that we, which is to say the Trustees, do have to be quite careful about letting out to the general public. As you can imagine, some of what we keep here can be a little bit on the culturally sensitive side, to say nothing of the political ramifications which I don't _pretend_ to have any patience for, but it's more than my job's worth not to respect, now, where was the wretched thing, ah, _there_," he quite casually puts down a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket with a wand on top, "so I do rather have to take something of an interest in where and how you intend to publish, you see? Tiresome, I know."

I'm impressed with the casualness of it. If I wasn't in the know, well, it'd just be an eccentric museum curator with an odd artefact in his pocket just like the curiosities he's got scattered about the shelves among the books. "I do take your point," I say, resisting the urge to punch the air and exclaim that _I fuckin' knew it!_ "And I don't doubt that the conversation we have about the manuscript will depend greatly on the answers to those questions." I keep eye contact as I lay my own wand on my side of the desk.

A cheery smile breaks through the Beard like the sun through clouds. "Ravenclaw, class of '69, yourself?"

"Didn't go to Hogwarts. Educated abroad, only started learning the wand arts a year or so ago. And since I can speak plainly, I need to get a particularly nasty curse off without damaging the property it's on." Which is an entirely honest description of what I want this for. Slaves _are_ property, after all.

"And you think the Qumran Rite is the only tool for the job?" That isn't the proper name of the ritual, of course. It gets called after the place where it was invented because it's a deal shorter and easier to pronounce.

"Well, I have the notes of the jackass who put the wretched thing on in the first place, and he seemed to think that was what it would take. I haven't followed his working through in _all_ the details yet, but so far I haven't seen anything to suggest that he's wrong."

"And you haven't gone through Gringotts to hire a cursebreaker because … ?"

"Nothing to do with the expense. I've given undertakings of confidentiality, quite strong and sincere ones, and Gringotts has been known to leak." Gringotts, indeed, has been known to not give two shits what any outsider knows or doesn't know so long as you don't try to steal from them. Confidentiality is a bit of an alien concept to goblins, very much learned behaviour on the occasions when they practise it. They live in small, tight-knit groups where everyone knows everyone else's business. If they like you, they see no problem in gossiping with you: paying them for information gets you past that 'if they like you' hurdle at the price of confirming everything goblins believe about human venality. That's by the by, though. "On top of that, I'm a bit of a sucker for an intellectual and magical challenge, and it promises to be rather fun. Adding the Rite to my own personal arsenal of cursebreaking tricks is sort of a useful bonus."

"That settles a whole lot of the questions I wanted to raise with you, yes. We get the occasional wizard in here who thinks himself _awfully_ clever because he's researched the history of the killing curse -"

"And thinks '_It was a cursebreaking accident, officer_' would be a defence to charges of using an Unforgivable Curse?" I'm shaking my head at that one. "Have they even read the Statute of Unforgivable Curses? It's surprisingly clear for wizarding legislation: it defines the incantation, the wand motion, specifies that neither is necessary but either is sufficient, that the target be a reasonable creature under the peace of the realm, and that the spell be cast with sufficient success to have visible effect whether it hits the intended target or not and whether it actually kills him or not. While I don't know the specifics yet - if I did, I wouldn't be here - I do know enough to say that the spell just doesn't work the same way in its proper context of the Rite."

"Quite," Finkel says, leaning back in his chair. "They get awfully discouraged when I explain to them that you _can't_ just fire it off at someone without being caught by that law."

I frown, "Do you get that a lot?"

"Every couple of years. I've dealt personally with two."

"You pass their names to the DMLE, I trust?"

"The names they give us, yes, along with a photograph if we can manage to get one. We're willing to be a little more discreet if you convince us that you're genuine, which I'm pleased to say you have."

I nod. "Sensible." And, of course, he hasn't told me specifically that he _will_ exercise that discretion.

"It seems to work. We've only had to send someone along to testify on the matter once in the century and a half we've had this particular Rite."

"The Museum works with the Ministry?"

Finkel snorts. "The Ministry has people in the Museum, I'm one of them. The Department of Mysteries isn't just the Unspeakables, although that would be a career option if I didn't already have my dream job. There are a few of us here, keeping an eye on the magical accessions and controlling who gets to see them. The Qumran Rite is one of the less explosive items."

"I would've assumed that the Ministry would insist on the dangerous stuff being squirrelled away on Ministry premises?"

"The Department of Mysteries likes to think of itself as a bit more sensible than the rest of the Ministry, and takes the view that things can be secured and controlled here and in other places," and oh, does that '_other places'_ bit sound like something to follow up, "as easily as under Whitehall. There's also the very real concern that putting some of these things in a place that the greater mass of wizards and witches frequent is akin to storing a crate of grenades in a monkey house."

That knocks me back a moment. _Common sense? Among magicals?_ "I'd grow affronted on behalf of Wizarding Britain if I didn't read about their antics every day in the _Prophet._"

"Quite. I was more than a little relieved to learn that the Department would fund my degree and doctorate and get me a job here. Not only does it keep me away from the lunatics, it was a lifelong ambition of mine from before I got my Hogwarts letter. Now, how's your first century Aramaic?"

"Fairly dreadful, but I'm working on it." Mostly when I'm being Kid Mal. Juvenile neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing, and for the first time in my existence I'm actually getting on with languages outside the Indo-European group.

"Well, since you've ticked precisely _none _of the boxes that an aspiring murderer would, I can let you have the crib we keep for the serious researchers and the Gringotts trainees, along with this print of the photograph of the whole parchment that expands to actual size if you cancel the shrinking charm on it. It can be engorged to double size without losing detail." He's passing items across the desk as he speaks, "_This_ is a pronunciation guide for the incantations, the IPA version down the right hand side is my own work and I can confirm it personally. We had a second century Roman curse-tablet last year that turned out to be the genuine article rather than the tourist tat, the IPA pronunciation worked _marvellously_."

_Score!_

-oOo-

The back door slams. Hard.

Sirius and I look at each other.

After a moment, "Wonder what's got Moony in a bate?" Sirius wonders aloud.

"He didn't say where he was off to today," I say, and after a moment of thinking about the lunar calendar so as to be sure it's not _that_, "and if it was anything serious he'd have called for backup, right?"

"Right. At least, I hope he would."

At that moment Remus comes into the living room. I hit pause on the video we'd been watching - _Aliens,_ although I've a wait ahead of me for the Director's Cut - and look to him for an explanation of the ruckus.

"Sorry about the slamming door," Remus says, collapsing on to the end of the sofa Sirius isn't occupying, "and also sorry about every time I doubted you on the subject of Albus Sodding Dumbledore being a complete _wally_." He's clearly well and truly ticked off: his native welsh accent is poking through the elocution.

I have to grind my mental gears a moment. I'd _completely_ forgotten that bit of '80s invective, and surprisingly haven't heard it once since I came back. Have I lost touch with The Kids? Whatever.

"What'd he do?" Sirius asks, blowing off the obvious question about why Remus has come into contact with the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Hopefully Remus won't think _too_ hard about that. 'Yeah, we knew you were a spy all along, you were dead obvious and we've been laughing at you behind your back' would be a bit cruel if we had to admit it to his face.

"Well, I happened to be in Hogsmeade, just generally being out and about -" he mentions an old school chum who revels in the nickname 'Chunders' who asked to be remembered to Sirius and they take a moment to reminisce between them.

When the story comes back to its actual _point,_ there Remus is, "about to leave the Broomsticks when I bump into Dumbledore, and he asks if I'd care to stop for a drink with him if I'm not in a hurry anywhere. Which I wasn't, so I did, and we got to chatting and I caught him up on how you chaps are doing, and how Harry's doing, and that Harry's baby cousin had early accidental magic, just gossip," which I notice seems to have all gone in one direction, Remus, but let's let that lie, "and I brought up your concerns about James's heirloom cloak and that when you figure out where it went you're likely to go after whoever took it wands blazing and with the full force of the law, not to mention the bad publicity."

Remus takes a stiff belt of the drink Sirius got him while they were yarning earlier. "At which point Dumbledore admits that he's had it all along. Prongs lent it to him just before, before, you know. Before. And he's basically stuck to it ever since. Oh, he had some story about keeping it out of unscrupulous hands or some such, and I took him to task right away about knowing what that cow Avery was up to with the estate, and if he didn't know why was he hanging on to the cloak? Well, he didn't have an answer to that, and I'm afraid I was making a bit of a scene, stood up and shouting with the evening crowd in and staring and I felt I ought to get away before I gave in to the urge to fetch him a wallop, so I told him Harry had better have it back in his hands by early morning owl or there'd be hell to pay."

"Good thing you were in public," I say in the best and slyest drawl I can manage as Kid Mal, "or you'd have been obliviated."

"What?"

"Well, you think dear old Albus is going to let the kind of source who'll cheerfully natter all kinds of useful gossip over mulled mead stay angry at him?"

Remus is frowning, "I've not been spying -"

"Good heavens, no," I reassure him, "almost nobody ever _is_. They just talk, the way everyone does, to a friendly face that they've known and trusted for _years_ and they don't realise how much they're giving away. Tell me, what prompted you to get back in touch with Sirius?"

Remus's face goes white. "Dumbledore sent me a clipping from the Prophet, with a note that said I ought to know what was going on back here in blighty."

I give him the ol' finger-guns. "_That_ is how you recruit agents. Did you make a routine of looking in on ol' Chunders? Other old friends who now live in Hogsmeade, of which the Headmaster of Hogwarts is _ex officio _Mayor?"

Sirius is carefully looking anywhere but at Remus.

"Every few weeks," he says, in a small voice. "Ran into Dumbledore more often than not."

"Well, assuming we get James's cloak back here in the next day or two - and it's getting the _full_ Magic of Measurement treatment, you may depend upon it - send Dumbledore a note of apology for the harsh, high-handed tone you took with him, and go back to your routine. Apologise again when you run into him, and you will. Let him apologise to you."

"And _that_, Moony," Sirius says, reaching over to grab the whisky bottle off the coffee table, "is how we recruit _double_ agents."

Remus snorts in affronted amusement. "Not sure I can," he says, "Can't help but feel I've burnt that bridge. Loudly and publicly."

"Two answers to that," I tell him, "the first is that a bit of a blow-up like that isn't a burnt bridge unless it was the absolute last fucking straw,"

"Can I just say that the f-word out of someone who looks eight years old is a bit unsettling?" Remus puts in.

"Fuckin' _cope_," I reply, grinning at him, "and the second thing is that while Dumbledore absolutely doesn't want to lose you as a source, he _will_ try and hold your loss of temper over you and think it makes you more beholden to him. Don't disabuse him of that. We'd like to know what he thinks he knows, you see."

"You've been feeding me false information?"

"Being careful about what we let you see, nothing more than that. Lying when you don't absolutely have to? That's a fool's bargain. Speaking of which, make sure Albus knows you're helping Harry and Dudley with their French lessons, won't you?"

"Am I?"

"Yes you are. Or was your residence for three of the last four years not Marseilles? They've got to the point of speaking in complete sentences, they need conversation partners to build vocab and fluency, and your accent is better than mine."

"Well, of course, although your accent isn't _that_ bad. Why should I emphasise that to Dumbledore?"

"So he understands that when it comes to schooling, Harry has _options_."

"Ah, _leverage_. I get it. Why do you think Dumbledore held on to the cloak? By rights he should have put it with the estate, or at least put it back in the Potter vault when the administration period was over."

"Well, if I had a valuable, useful keepsake of an orphan's family, what effect would it have to say I'd held on to it and kept it out of the hands of the vultures who stole said orphan's inheritance, and here it is kept all safe for you?" Totally unfair, of course. In the books, Dumbledore returned the cloak anonymously and Harry didn't find out for certain that Dumbledore had ever had it until after the man was dead. That is _absolutely_ not stopping me from holding it up as a thing he _might_ do and letting Remus's current ill temper lead him to a prejudicial reading of the situation. An agent you know about is useful, but a double agent who's turned on a matter of principle is _gold_.

"That's _awful_. Again, I'm sorry I took his side. Look, I'll give this secret-squirrel lark you're suggesting a try, but I don't know if I'll be any good."

I wave off his concerns. "You've _already_ been doing it without any trouble. Modicum of acting, make sure you keep your occlumency drills up to date, and remember that we're not _ever_ going to lie to the man. Just, you know, not mention one thing, emphasise another. And yes, there are some things you're just not going to be told at all. Even aside from the situation with Dumbledore, you need your plausible deniability the most out of the three of us. The point, though, is that Dumbledore has a history of high-handed blundering and we want to discourage him from involving Harry if we can, and at least get a warning if he does it anyway."

I'd be happy about the good fortune, but I can't help but imagine the cool, disinterested intelligence of the _Defensor Patriae_ nodding over a good move.

-oOo-

"This is funny how, exactly?" Sirius is standing back from our handiwork, making sure it's square and level.

"Don't look at me," Remus says, "I only work here." He's coming more and more out of himself after the upset with Dumbledore and the awkwardness of reconciling with the man. Which is nice to see. He's setting up to take a photo. Most wizards leave and return by floo or apparition: the gates only get used by guests, and not favoured guests at that. So we're going to have to draw attention to our work by sending an anonymous tip and picture to the press and the DMLE. If someone - hopefully our chosen victim - gets pressured into making a completely ridiculous public statement, I'll be delighted.

"Weeeell," I say, tapping my wand to the final rune-spell that will make the thing remarkably difficult to move, destroy or vanish, "right now it isn't that funny at all. Surreal, yes, and mildly sinister, and not a little insulting, and likely to grow more so every time we come back and replace it, but not actually funny. However! When the movie comes out in a few years' time, it's going to be _hilarious_."

We're in Wiltshire, outside a gate that you need to be holding a wand to even see. Erected next to it, just narrowly outside the line that delineates the protective magics that guard the estate behind the wall - Magic of Measurement comes through again, I love that book - is a fine, shiny new sign. Not quite big enough to be called a billboard, but certainly large enough to be eye-catching.

MALFOY & SON

DEAD MUGGLE STORAGE

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Diet of raptors: Owls, like all raptors, need careful management of their feeding when domesticated. They're optimised for high-performance aerial predation, and ought not to stray very far from their natural diet. Giving them eg. bacon is about like trying to run a racing car on farm diesel. (Not a falconer myself, but am on chatting-in-the-pub terms with a couple, one of whom specialises in owls.)

The famous dimethyl mercury poisoning case is that of Karen Wetterhahn, who died in 1997 despite following all reasonable safety precautions. She's the reason why nobody uses it any more if it can be at all avoided: she learned the hard way that it goes right through latex gloves.

Porton Down is the UK Ministry of Defence Research Establishment. I've no idea if they actually keep a stock of nerve agents there, but it's the first place Mal thought of that they might.

The researcher friend mentioned is based on a real person I knew at university, rather than school.

"C of E" is the usual colloquialism for the Church of England, an institution that is a disgusting reactionary throwback or an insidious leftist fifth column depending on which party's extremists you hear about it from.

Yes, the Japanese Golfer Joke is real, I heard it years before JKR put pen to paper. The punchline is "What do you mean, 'wrong hole'?" and you can pretty much reconstruct the entire thing from that.

To "groke" is to stare longingly at someone's food while they're eating it in the hope that they'll share some with you. It's an archaic english word that every dog owner needs to know.

St. Mungo (St. Kentigern on formal occasions, Mungo was a nickname that translates as something like "Sweetheart".) wasn't made up by JKR. He was a noted missionary and healer and founded what later became the city of Glasgow, where his grave and the cathedral named for him still are. He's also reputed to have had dealings with Merlin, albeit in Merlin's considerably declining years.

Stories about bishops and saints from pre-medieval times often recount the wonderful magic they performed. The witch panics didn't start until much, much later, and only after general opinion of magic shifted from 'a thing some people can do' to 'powers granted to people who've sold their souls to the Devil'.

The enmity of clergy toward hobs and brownies is a real part of folklore. (As is the name Dobby, in some parts of the north of England, albeit for the species rather than a particular individual.)

Dr. Irving Finkel delivers lectures on the British Museum's channel on Youtube, covering assyriology, games of the ancient world, the Flood legend, and, yes, magic. He's an erudite and engaging speaker, you should look him up. I personally reckon he's a wizard for real: that beard is a dead giveaway and his PhD is in exorcism spells (not even slightly kidding). You may notice, if you're familiar with his screen persona, that I've toned him down _considerably_, or Mal would've been in there all bloody day.

Remus has, in fact, never seen Secret Squirrel. He's picking up figures of speech from Mal and not concerning himself overmuch with where they come from.

I'd apologise for the last bit, but I'm not a bit sorry. (I nearly marked it as Omake.) Mal is inspired - over and above the obvious - by the episode from US politics where apparently someone said "I don't actually believe he's a pig-fucker, I just want to make the son of a bitch deny it."

Your fanfic recommendation for this chapter: A Wizard's Guide to 'Banking' by bakuraptor, on FFN only to the best of my knowledge. I won't spoil the central conceit of the story beyond telling you it's hilarious, but it's an excellent story - better than this one, which makes it a crying shame that it has had less reader attention - that does _wonderful_ things with 'wizarding culture' and magical theory.


	25. In your face, Orpheus

DISCLAIMER: Do we get any description of Azkaban, despite characters being sent to or escaping from it in all but two of the books? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

Still have a buffer of finished writing.

* * *

Chapter 25

"And that's all of it. I rather think I understand why you and Moody get on, now." We're in a tent - a cheap magical one that fits a nice large open-plan interior space in an unassuming little two-berth exterior - and we've both got our gear laid out for the final check-list.

Remus is off for the holiday period and won't be back until the new year. The months he's spent on Wolfsbane, along with some sensible support, have him actually trusting that his condition is managed. He still sleeps in a cage on full moon nights, because he's not an idiot, but these days he has a cage custom-built by a fabrication shop in Staines. There's a bed in it, and shrinking charms so he can take it with him when travelling. (It has a latch that we designed to require two opposable thumbs to operate, and the fabricators _still_ believed we were going to be putting humans in it for the purposes of kink.) The upshot is that he'll be staying with his dad until after the full moon on the fourth of January.

Between Tom's bribed-out-of-the-Ministry knowledge and Sirius's insider experience, we're confident we're working to good intelligence. Staging the job for the day after Boxing Day means that the guardhouse is more likely to be understaffed: Sirius remembered that food was often late or missing entirely between Christmas and New Year. Because apparently staffing the prison with fucking demons isn't _enough_ of an atrocity for Wizarding Britain.

Sirius's crack about Moody-level preparations is a fair one, and to be honest I'm flattered by the comparison anyway. I like to think I try and practise the same kind of common sense as Moody, just with better social graces. Every bit of kit we'll need for the plan, plus backups of the same, duplicated between the two of us, makes for a fairly lengthy pre-flight checklist _before _we get rigged up for skydiving on top of that. "Yeah, well, extension and featherweight charms mean you don't have to make compromises to practise the Seven Ps. You really _can_ bring two of everything."

"Oh, I get it. I'm just complaining about all the extra work. I'm one of nature's nobility, don't you know? Manual labour is beneath me." He strikes an effete pose, nose in the air and wrist pressed to forehead.

"Speaking as the one of us who's, you know, an actual _lord:_ back to work, peasant!"

"Help, help, I'm bein' oppressed -" He trails off at the Hard Stare I give him.

"And from here on in, it's code-names only, Mr. Glitter."

"Right you are, Mr. Saville. I'm assuming there's more than my inherent rockstar nature that got me my codename?"

"The fact that I can do the voice and the catchphrases for Saville, and you can't, frankly." Obviously we can't perform a prison break under our right names, and while Magical Law Enforcement will probably drop the dead-end lead when they turn up a couple of muggle celebrities, there's a small chance they'll investigate, stuff some veritaserum down the fuckers, and do the right thing. And given the _other_ attention this night's work will attract, there's a chance the swine will get cruciated into lifelong catatonia. Such a tragedy.

(Sirius' originally wanted Mr. Reeves and Mr. Mortimer for codenames. I spotted the stage show in _Time Out_, dragged him and Remus along, and the pair of them became instant fans. I pointed out that we didn't want to put people we _liked_ in the firing line.)

It takes us the best part of an hour to get everything stowed in space-expanded pockets - both of us the same, so we can find what we need in a hurry if things go to pot - and our parachutes on. We've become members of every skydiving club in England, which got us a lot more training in a shorter period than we could have got any other way. I suspect Sirius is going to keep it up as a hobby. Me, not so much. The fear of heights was an obstacle I got over, but I'm never going to _enjoy_ being off terra firma.

By the time we've got the tent packed up and we're standing in our chosen staging area - a little patch of low ground just inland from Duncansby Head - it's just past nine at night and it's been dark for nearly six hours. There's a high pressure front moving in from the south, and every prospect of a clear, dry day tomorrow: the sky is clear, stars are twinkling, the moon is bright, and the wind is light and steady in the southeast.

"Earpiece check, Mr. Glitter?"

"Loud and clear, Mr. Saville."

"Don't mind admitting that I am, at this point, bricking it."

"Which bit? The skydiving at night onto a dark fortress? The demons of despair that haunt the whole island? The fact that the place is stuffed full of the worst humanity has to offer? The fact that if we fuck up, we'd better fuck up badly enough to die because we'll be thrown in that self-same prison?"

Not sure I can really pick one. "Yes," I say.

"Well, I'm glad _someone_ on this little escapade is within hailing distance of sanity." There's a bit of a tremor in Sirius, sorry, Mr. Glitter's voice. I dare say he'd have considered this a bloody good laugh if he'd not spent the best part of four years locked up in there. He's facing up to some nasty personal demons from the moment we apparate to our target altitude of 10,000 feet. From there we're apparating a gnat's wossname north of due east in thousand-yard increments until we sight Azkaban Island. When we land, the demons become _literal_ ones.

That is, perversely, the reason this plan is going to work. Azkaban relies on those things as its main form of security: nobody with any sense goes any nearer than they absolutely have to. Trouble is, Dementors don't have the initiative and adaptability of human guards. They're sapient enough to follow instructions when it suits them, and understand that not devouring the prisoners _now_ means more feeding over the long term. Beyond that, they ain't terribly bright and they're cripplingly over-focussed on the essentials of their nature.

The rest of the security is alarm spells to alert the human guards, who are on the island but not in the prison, of a breakout in progress. If you don't have the same cultural blinders as the people who designed those magics, there are huge and obvious holes. The alarm triggers on wand use: therefore, don't use your wand. Where the security can't be beaten by magic, beat it _without_ magic. Magic, and the wand, are the British wizards' lifelines, and they cling to them in ways that make them vulnerable. Both Tom's original plan and my remix of it exploit that.

It doesn't make the plan any less scary, the reasons Sirius just mentioned being only the executive summary. Even if everything goes perfectly - and we've planned and trained to the point where we can recover from most hitches - this is going to _suck_. "I think we left sanity back in Surrey. A minute to get our night vision, and we can get going."

"Sooner the better. Hate waiting. It was the worst part of being a Hit Wizard."

"Thought you never worked for the Ministry?" I distinctly remember him saying that.

"Retained Hit Wizard. Don't know if they still do it, but they had a roster of part-timers. You got paid if you were called out and a bonus if there was fighting. You had to be on call so many days a month, able to get in to the DMLE on five minutes' notice. Only the full-timers were actually Ministry employees." Firefighters do something similar. Again with the wizarding common sense: it turns up in the oddest places.

**Because muggles are **_**so**_ **much more sensible.**

_Fuck off, Tom._

"Well, balaclavas and goggles on. Ready?"

"Ready." Sirius's voice has firmed up.

"On your mark, get set… GO!"

As the squeeze and whoosh of apparition takes hold, Tom can't help but chime in.

**You're going to die.**

I don't dignify it with a response, I'm about to get a respite from the prick. One _brilliant_ side effect of the Patronus is that it shuts Tom _right_ the fuck up.

-oOo-

Check altitude.

Azkaban Island is teardrop-shaped, oriented east-west, with the guardhouse on the western 'tail' of the teardrop and the fortress on the bulging end in the east. The island is mostly storm-swept rock, nothing can live there. Except, ironically, in the little patch on the western tail where the graveyard is. A couple of centuries of inmate corpses buried in broken and pulverised rock have fertilised it to the point where thin and scrubby marram-grass can cling to life.

Not sure if it's any comfort to the poor bastards who stand guard one week in three in the squat stone blockhouse by the jetty. At least they only have to go to the fortress once a day, to deliver food.

I'm studying it all from up in the air because for all Tom memorised the survey drawings, he'd never actually _seen_ Azkaban island or its eponymous fortress. What's more, the drawings are missing quite a lot of important information. Whoever did them worked from ground level and relied on mapping charms in an unplottable location. Which is _theoretically_ okay provided you don't try and tie anything to exterior landmarks. In practise it'll give you confused and confusing results if you're, for example, trying to get the job done as fast as possible to get away from all the fucking Dementors.

So I get a bit of a surprise while plummeting from several thousand feet up. It's almost enough to distract me from how much I really, really, really, truly, sincerely dislike being up in the air and falling. Azkaban fortress is a _trace italienne _star-fort.

Check altitude.

Or such is my first impression, but a longer look - check altitude - corrects that. It is, in fact, a seven-vertex magical geometry, realised in slabs of obsidian (possibly basalt, I'm no geologist. Polished black stone, at any rate.) sloped inward to form something that just _looks_ like a gunpowder-era fortification. The points of the 'star' are arranged to make quite credible bastions, and from the look of it whoever built the thing cleared and levelled the ground with big earth-moving spells that left piles of rock between the points that look at first glance like ravelins.

Check altitude.

**Stop panicking. This is the best part, you coward**_**.**_

_Fuck off, Tom_. Check altitude. _I am not panicking, I am in full control of my faculties despite this entirely disagreeable experience_.

Azkaban has no exterior windows or openings of any kind: all of the usable space of the fortress opens on to the inner circular yard. Which suggests that the most magically-important bit is that outer formation. All straight lines so it's none of the Dho-Na geometries, no bounding circle so it's not any of the Solomonic series, the sound of the magic is a bone-deep ominous rumble like the earth itself is snarling a warning -

I'm distracting myself when I should be paying attention, but fortunately I've brought a complete _idiot_ along to break me out of my ruminations.

Loudly enough, the arse, that I can hear him singing without the aid of my earpiece. "Fighting wiiiiiiiiiizards, from the skyyyyyyyy!"

"Fuck's sake, they'll fucking hear you," I snap back. "Also, don't you _dare_ sing the next line, we're not jumping to die, thank you very much." Check altitude. His war movie kick reached the near-pinnacle of John Wayne's career in unintentional comedy (the _actual _pinnacle being The Conqueror, of course) a couple of months back, and he bought a big floppy lime-green beret to wear down the pub. He and Remus thought it was hilarious. So did everyone else there once they had a couple of drinks down their necks: they'd all had a wear of it by closing time. I'm on a one drink limit until my body's old enough to handle more, and never has sobriety sucked so hard.

"Spoilsport. Nearly there anyway."

Check altitude: so we are. One pulled cord and several disagreeable seconds later, I have an open canopy and I'm spared the prospect of a hurtling, splattery death.

**Until the next time you do this, of course. Besides, what are you worrying about? You're only risking inconvenient discorporation.**

_I don't _know _that, I might well be able to actually die if I don't bail out of this body in time, and if I don't have a body to hide in what's that dirty great big piece of geomancy going to do to me? Not to mention being a disembodied mind and soul in the middle of colony of fucking soul-eaters, you fuckwit. Now shut up and let me concentrate on flying this wretched thing._

Sirius, the prat, left it to the last second and I see his canopy bloom below and to my right.

And, through my earpiece, I hear a weird, high-pitched groan.

"Sirius?" He _looks_ in good shape.

"One of my straps worked a bit loose, I think." There's a definite squeaky tone to his voice. "Nothing serious, but my, ah, pride has been hurt. And it's Glitter, remember."

I wince in sympathy: the jolt of opening a parachute, if it's not spread out by properly-tightened straps, tends to impact right in the crotch. I decide to save yelling at him until the mission is over. "Suffer in silence. Be just our luck for someone to be making late-night rounds and hear you skrikin' about yer plums."

All I get in return is a snort of amusement. If the damage is light enough that he can still laugh, I can dismiss it. Below, the magical geometry of Azkaban is becoming more apparent: as well as the big star-shaped outline, there are inner rings and figures executed in the shapes of the interior construction. Most of the central compound is in shadow, but the bit that's moonlit seems to have grooves carved into it. I suspect if you wanted to break the power of this place, you'd do better to build disruptive additions rather than demolish anything. Although _not_ before consulting a really _top-flight_ geomancer and ritualist, preferably both specialties in the same person.

Dropping below the hundred foot mark, steering so as not to land on Sirius who's already down, I start to feel the clammy deadness of depression settle on me.

_Oh no you fuckin' DON'T._

Dementors. Living embodiments of depression, and the nastiest psychovores known to wizard-kind. Probably infovores into the bargain, that chilling effect could readily be them feeding on local entropy and moving things closer to absolute zero. A single dementor wouldn't be affecting me from beyond line-of-sight, but a whole nest of the bastards?

Enough: I have more urgent business. Occlumency clamps the mind _down_, anger keeps the spirits _up_. I have a serious case of the _arse_ with the Dementors of Azkaban, as only someone who's lived decades with depression can, and I hold that firmly in mind.

Down. Roll. Thank fuck for that. No sprains, strains, or bruises worth the mention. Speak the command word to re-pack my chute. Pop the harness and stuff the rig into the expanded-space satchel I've brought for the purpose.

(Sirius doesn't think the parachute-packing enchantment he came up with is entirely trustworthy, but it's good enough for getting the thing stowed even if you wouldn't use the results outside a _dire_ emergency).

None of the disgusting abominations are close enough to be having a serious effect. Just enough to know they're there, which is why I'm more angry than depressed. I asked Sirius why nobody ever tried fiendfyre, and he reckons it's because nobody has good enough control to risk it. The ones that _do_ have good control of fiendfyre generally see Dementors as an asset. Rather than, you know, a disgusting stain on creation that ought to be purged without hesitation or mercy.

Sirius has taken a knee a few yards away. Hunched shoulders, head down, darting looks all around. As I get closer I can hear him panting. It doesn't look like a panic attack quite _yet_, but I bet he ain't far off.

The fortunate thing about the Patronus Charm is that it is not, in fact, a Charm properly so called. It's not a call on magic outside the self: it brings out the spirit of love and protection and joy that the caster has built and nurtured _within_. Really primal stuff. While the plan was not to go active until we were in among the buggers, my boy is _hurting_.

_Three little babies opening their eyes for the first time. Little kids frantically mugging their way through nativity plays. Long drives to Halls of Residence, singing along to cheesy folk songs._ The trick is not using just _one_ happy memory to get in the right state of mind, but using _years_ of them. And then, not stopping at _happy_ but picking the ones that embody the fierce protectiveness you feel when you hold your kids for the first time, when they do things that make you proud and you see that look on their faces when you _tell _them you're proud of them.

It comes completely naturally to speak the incantation in Dad Voice. No need for shouting or theatrics: Daddy is Here, and going to Sort It All Out. "Expecto Patronum," and warmth blooms in my heart and runs down my arm to my wand. My Patronus is fortunately a little more impressive than my Animagus: fourteen feet of growling _Ophidiophagus hannah_, the King Cobra.

I have named him Hissing Sid, and he slithers out of my wand and coils protectively about Sirius, rearing up with flared hood to look about for threats. Sirius visibly unclenches, the set of his shoulders straightens, and he straightens his back.

"Thanks, Sid," he murmurs. Fortunately he doesn't understand parseltongue, so he doesn't hear Sid tell him to get his fuckin' finger out and get a fuckin' wiggle on and stop being such a cunting great wet wendy. I dread the day I have to use him to send messages. They're going to arrive littered with f- and c- bombs. My Patronus has no chill.

And is the only spell that won't set off a Caterwauling Charm in the guardhouse. The only _wand_ spell, made an exception because nobody comes in here without it running. Enchanted items and wandless magic are a gap in the security cover: the prisoners are stripped on the way in and British mages just don't think in terms of wandless magic having any real power. Tom would have just cast regardless, confident in his ability to slaughter the human guards when they investigated.

"Left pocket, Draught of Peace," I say, moving up next to Sirius. "Half dose only. You need to be relaxed but alert. And for fuck's sake don't eat any of the chocolate stored anywhere on your right side." Between the ones laced with Draught of Living Death and the ones with doses of poison in them, we're stocked like the Confectioners From Hell. "And crank up your Patronus now, the plan to stay stealthy until we're off the roof turns out to have been a bad one. Besides, the human guards can't see up here and they'll be indoors at this hour."

My own chocolate stash is a load of Bourneville bars in my left jacket pocket: the one brand of chocolate that I _actually_ like won't be on the market for a few years yet. I put up with the stuff for its medicinal value and get a couple of bars down my neck as a preventative. I'd had a vague idea of trying capsules of neat theobromine to boost the effect, but even if I'd had the time this would be a bad choice of field trial. Still, we've a thermos each of cocoa for the boat ride out: Sirius thinks me quite mad for preferring it with chili and salt, while I can't stand the sickliness of all the sugar he puts in his.

The inner courtyard of Azkaban looks like a circular version of an Indian stepped well, maybe eighty yards across at the top and forty at the bottom. Most of the floor is flat and paved, but there's a central well that the Dementors nest in. It's all much smaller than the bastion fort it looks like from the air. There's a weak light from the archways into the interior: gubraithian braziers that give the prisoners round the clock light and just enough heat that it isn't hypothermia that kills them.

Most of the prison is unoccupied, of course. If Magical Britain imprisoned at the same rate as their muggle counterparts there'd be maybe a dozen people in here at any one time, or three dozen if the non-wand-carrying population got included. They don't do non-custodial sentencing, though. If you don't get a fine, or get one that you can't pay, it's prison time or the Kiss.

Even so, there's maybe a hundred and fifty in a prison that could comfortably take nearly three times that. (Six times, if they make the inmates share cells.) Since there's no gate and the way in is over the wall via a staircase between the western bastions, the upper level prisoners get bigger cells, fed first and by the human guards, and spend their time further from the Dementors' nest.

The actual cells are in corridors behind the wall with all the staircases on it, and naturally we need the lowest level of seven. Dumbledore made high-minded speeches about the need for national healing, but the DMLE was in a pretty vindictive mood at every level from the office tea-witch on up. Between the lines of some of the things Moody has said, the Crouch Approvals were more about recognising facts on the ground. Nobody had been waiting for orders to take the gloves off, they just needed official sanction to include it in written reports. They were still losing, of course, because the justice system was compromised at all levels. But they took a grim satisfaction in making the bastards pay for it.

The descent into the central courtyard we take briskly, but methodically. Stone steps rimed with icy brine do not make for sure footing. We can't use assistive charms and there aren't any handrails. With hindsight I should've made enchanted segs for our boots. Fortunately, the stepwell construction of the place means we can go down anticlockwise . This lets me, with my considerably stronger Patronus, steady my off-hand side against the wall. More evidence that the place wasn't built as a fortification: if it was, there'd be stairs in only one direction to hamper an attacker fighting his way up or down them. Not sure which would apply: what magic means for defensive architecture I haven't had occasion to think through in full yet.

Hissing Sid and Sirius's recently-corporeal monkey Patronus - named Monkey, but you have to pronounce it the way they do on the TV show - are doing their job and doing it well. The Dementors that are haunting the courtyard area in a slow widdershins spiral tighten their orbits to give us a wide berth. I'm not saying that the poo-throwing mimes and non-stop parseltongue profanity are helping, but I'm not _not_ saying that either. The low comedy is definitely a lift to the spirits in this trying time.

What I'm not seeing - _yet_ \- is any of the beasts leaving to raise the alarm. They're doubtless used to seeing people with active Patroni moving about the place. They're also sapient enough to grasp that tolerating Patronus-wielding staff is what gets them their regular diet of the tasty, tasty misery of the prisoners.

Death Eater Row is right at the bottom, on the south side so it gets no sun, ever. As I say, the DMLE were in a _proper_ mood at the end of the war.

"Well, Mr. Glitter," I say as we face the archway, with its corridor leading deep into the rock the fortress is built of, "we haven't been able to drill this bit. You going to be okay without a Patronus?" We can't let the inmates see our protectors. They're not _quite_ as distinctive as a fingerprint, but it'd be a poor show to have one's defence against Dementors amount to confession evidence.

There's a pause. Sirius is jamming his face full of a brand he likes because of the talking rabbit in the advert. Which, fair enough. _Everyone_ is furry for the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny. "I am taking it eeeeasy."

"I'll take that as a yes. Cloaks on, and get the portable door ready."

"Cloak and door, aye aye." The invisibility cloaks aren't for stealth: it's going to be blindingly obvious we're there. They're to make sure nobody can give a useful description of us. Not that the gloves, balaclavas and goggles we're wearing against the cold reveal much, but we're going belt-and-braces. The charms on our undies that prevent any hair, fibre, or skin cell trace evidence dropping off us are just common sense. Sure, hardly anyone can use the _vestigium_ series of charms worth a damn, but I'd bet the larger of my testicles that Moody has _mastered_ them.

"Right then," I say once we're cloaked up. "Time for Jim to Fix It," although I'm not making a very good effort at the voice to go with the catchphrase.

We drop our Patroni and step in smartly. Sirius is quick about getting the portable door up. It's just a great big heavy slab of pine joinery with rune charms carved into it. A wand tap makes it expand to fit snugly in the doorway, and incidentally keep the bloody Dementors out. Of course, if we've trapped one in here with us we have a _problem_.

We haven't. We weren't expecting to. Sirius recalled the Dementors came in to give the prisoners their rations in the morning, then returned a little later. It gave the wretches time to eat, so the Dementors could feed when the prisoners were at their strongest. They get all night to recover.

Death Eater Row is a semicircular corridor with stone bays around the outside of the curve: the archway to the outdoors is at the midpoint, with a blank wall where it forms a t-junction with the indoor corridor. The close-set bars across the front of the bays that convert them into cells were added when the building was converted into Wizard Clink. In one of those amusing little twists of historical irony, this move permitted the closure of the magical wing of the original Clink, the loss of which protections allowed a rioting mob to burn it down in 1780.

"I'll check left, you check right," I say. I'm suddenly feeling a lot less inclined to make jokes.

"Right you are, Mr. Saville," and from the sound of Sirius' voice, he's holding up reasonably well. Unfortunately the acoustics in this place are such that he could never be sure which way any particular scream of despair was coming from: the most he can say is that he wasn't marched past her cell on the way out when he was released. The search won't take long, there are only twelve cells on each block down here at the bottom of Azkaban.

The prisoners aren't asleep yet. It's a little short of eleven at night, and sleep don't come easy in this place. So the sound of our voices has the prisoners riled up, making it hard to concentrate as I walk along and look long enough at each particular wretch to ensure it's not female. None of them are: while the wizarding world is a touch more egalitarian than their non-magical contemporaries, there are still widely held Views on the Proper Conduct of Ladies. Not to mention that Tom came from the muggle world, and that informed his recruiting decisions.

Most of what's coming through the bars at me is incoherent screaming, insults and so forth. No bodily wastes or fluids, which I'm thankful for. A couple of the fuckers are loudly declaring their loyalty to the Dark Lord, and I make a mental note to be _sure_ they get a nice choccy treat. I _had_ been having second thoughts about the whole 'poison them in their cells' plan, but when you hear someone loudly declaiming that he wants out to 'get back to killing all the fucking muds,' well, it's hard not to come over all Frank Castle.

"Mister Saville!" Sirius' voice in my earpiece - and echoing down the corridor - sounds a little bright and brittle. He is, at least, remembering to put on an outrageous accent.

"Yes, Mister Glitter?"

"I 'ave our gel." Unfortunately, his attempt at Cockney has a distinct hint of Dick Van Dyke about it.

"With you in just a moment." Most I seem to be able to manage is a generic Yorkshire and a bit of a nasal tone to it. I'm not as good at celebrity impressions as I remember being before I died.

Sirius has, indeed, found our girl. She looks a little less broken down than the other prisoners, just the rough condition that five years of bad food and no exercise will visit on a body. The mind-control isn't any kind of defence against the Dementors, but she seems to be managing anyway.

**The obsession reasserts itself while the Dementors aren't feeding on her. A strong fixated idea for her mind to rally around. The loyalty compulsions in the Dark Mark will do the same to a lesser extent for my other Death Eaters.**

_Huh. That was actually helpful._

Whatever.

The trick here is explaining the plan to the star of the show without saying anything aloud that can be repeated to an investigating auror. Or even just to one of the guards, or shrieked in the course of a nightmare where a Dementor can hear and pass it on. The solution, of course, is a set of flash cards for her to read.

GOOD EVENING MME. LESTRANGE. WE'RE HERE TO GET YOU OUT. I am, of course, making the gesture to 'ping' her Dark Mark. Tom was right to think it was a good security measure and recognition sign for followers who mostly only saw each other masked. Security-by-obscurity has a respectably low failure rate, but only so long as the obscurity is maintained. He pretty much _couldn't_ plan for someone devouring a complete copy of his mind.

Her eyes widen and she rushes to grasp the bars and re-read the card.

"He lives? He is returned?" There's a desperate yearning in her voice. Tom might've been right about the obsession with him holding her together.

Next card, though. DON'T REPEAT ANY OF THE PLAN ALOUD. IF THEY LEARN HOW WE'RE DOING THIS THEY'LL PLUG THE GAP IN THE DEFENCES.

Frantic nodding. There's a noticeable chilling in the air, and Sirius is facing away from the cells to lift his mask. I hear the crinkle of chocolate wrapper. At a guess, the Dementors are crowding around the blocked door, stacking up on the other side of that wall. Which is several feet thick, but apparently that's not enough to do much more than mute the effect. The ever-burning braziers have dimmed somewhat. The prisoners have fallen quiet. They know what this sensation means. I hold a Bournville bar out to Bellatrix; I need her coherent. And the look on her face makes my heart go out to the poor woman. Even if she's just as awful under the brainwashing, nobody deserves this. Except that one guy over on the other block. _He_ can get fucked.

She looks at it with suspicion, so I pull a glove off to have skin contact with the flashcard. That lets me transfigure the ink on it into different text without using my wand and setting off the alarm. MUGGLE CHOCOLATE, SO WE WEREN'T REMEMBERED BUYING THE STUFF BY ANYONE THE DMLE WILL TALK TO. IT'S NOT BAD, UNLESS YOU PREFER MILK CHOCOLATE?

She shakes her head and unwraps. Hungry and tormented she may be, but she doesn't resort to cramming it in like Sirius and I do. Not delicate bites like I suspect she was raised to take, but still maintaining at least _some _ladylike decorum. Another transfiguration, held up in one of the moments when she's not got her eyes closed in enjoyment and relief. BETTER?

She nods, then reaches out a hand to touch the flashcard. Her magic sounds _exactly_ like a virtuoso violin. Like it's actually playing tunes, too, a trait her magic shares with her big sister Andromeda. She can do touch transfiguration too, it seems. Her message reads I SERVE OUR LORD. NOT TOO PROUD EAT ANIMAL FEED. It comes with a small smile.

I have to pretend to find it funny. She needs to think I'm a fellow Death Eater, after all, and my pretence of humour under pressure of a whole nest of Dementors outside is limited to a brief snort. Time for the next flashcards.

ESCAPE METHOD HAS WEIGHT LIMIT.

NEED TO TRANSFIGURE YOU PORTABLE.

CHOCOLATE W. DRAUGHT OF LIVING DEATH.

YOU MUST BE CLOSE TO BARS SO I CAN REACH YOU.

She deliberately overacts a questioning look.

I change the flashcard. TOUCH TRANSFIGURATION, ALARM ONLY ON WAND SPELLS.

Hammed-up disbelief.

NO, I REALLY **AM** THAT GOOD. I give her a thumb up for good measure. I didn't have any problem turning Fawley into more convenient forms, and doing it without the wand is just slower, more effort, and limited to touch range. The downside risk is that she gets a cleaner death than this place offers, at the price of us losing the opportunity she might represent.

Eye roll. She beckons the flash-card closer. TURN ME INTO WHAT? JUST ME?

DOLL. ALSO YOUR HUSBAND AND B-IN-LAW.

"I'm feeling pressure of time, Mr. Saville," Sirius says, with a distracted note in his voice. Amusingly, his cockney is much improved by the lack of ham.

"Our lass has questions, Mr. Glitter. Only polite t' answer 'em."

After what looks like a moment of internal debate, Bellatrix gives a firm nod and holds out her hand for the dosed sweetie. From the look on her face, she really _likes_ Thorntons' Rum Truffles, and she eats it sitting down with her hand through the bars. I pick up her wrist - thin and fragile - and when her pulse finally stops I get to work. I take it slow and steady: retaining the form factor, just changing size and composition so she becomes Prison Witch Barbie over the course of half a minute or so. Shrinking her striped woollen prison robe and socks to fit - prisoners are not permitted boots - takes a tiny fraction of my attention, it's not like I have to be careful with it.

The Brothers Lestrange don't ask questions _at all_. Sight of Bellatrix in doll form, the flash cards explaining the plan, a ping on their Dark Marks and they just follow orders. The out-of-hours Dementor pressure must be making them compliant.

**Don't overlook the fact that they're a pair of utter dullards. The father wasn't **_**much**_ **better.**

_I suppose I shouldn't expect too much from a lad who asked the likes of _you _for help with marital concerns._

I leave Tom to yucking it up in the back of my mind. Out loud, and in as strong a voice as I can manage, "You take this side, Mr. Glitter, I'll take that. These poor people need a little treat after we brought the Dementors down on them. We've enough for one each." More than, actually. Not all twenty-four cells on this row were filled, and three of them we just emptied.

"We're leaving now, we brought spare chocolate, enough for us to leave you one. Don't try and save it, the Dementors are going to be up in arms and the place'll be crawling with Aurors in the morning. Don't tell them anything, we want to be able to do this again." The same spiel repeated ten times, ten contaminated off-brand liqueur chocolates, unwrapped and dumped through the bars. The wrappers are leaving with us, being as they are evidence - and mister kill-the-muds gets two, with a reassurance that enthusiasm like his deserves a reward.

I meet up with Sirius back at the archway to the outdoors. "There's a lot of them," he says, nodding at the portable door, which is covered with ice, visibly warping in the cold, and might well fail altogether soon.

"Smoke first," I say. The prisoners are going to know that Patroni have been cast, but they'll not be able to describe them. Their cells define their 'place' tightly enough that viewers of pensieve memories won't be able to roam out of them, and at that they'd have to bring the thing inside the prison if they want even a chance at full-function viewing. The place has anti-scrying magics that limit pensieve function to normal recall if you're outside, as Sirius and I found when we tried to examine _his_ memories of the place. Screening smoke will work here better than it would most other places.

I made censers. A hundred grammes of granulated white phosphorus, a couple of sparklet bulbs of compressed oxygen, and some clockwork to give it a five-second delay before it opens and starts spewing smoke. Rapid prototyping: _really_ easy if you've got a wand and some basic mechanical and chemical know-how. Sirius charmed them to stay cool even while the contents were burning, and they have long chains attached. They're smoke grenades that we can retrieve and bring home with us. Again, no evidence left behind, other than a thin film of phosphoric acid on everything.

It's important to have the Patronus fully in being before you get hit with the full effect of the Dementor. Once the smoke screen is up, I get Hissing Sid lit before Sirius can even get his incantation out. He's having trouble, what with the Dementors paying close attention to the change in routine. With my cobra swearing and spitting his defiance, the pressure comes off a bit and Monkey surges into existence a moment or two later. I command the door to shrink - "'Ow's about that then?", a Jimmy Saville catchphrase - and bring it to my off hand and into my satchel with a firm tug of magic.

We're faced with a scene you'd never see in a nightmare, because you'd wake up sweating and shivering before it got this bad. The Dementors were pressed up against the door. With it gone, they surge forward like a January Sales crowd at opening time.

"_Get back, yer bastards! I'll bite yer goolies!"_ Hissing Sid is to the front, hood flared and advancing to meet them. Monkey is all bared teeth and waving arms as he charges.

There's a collective hiss, and thin shrieks, and in a swirl of tattered cloaks the tide of Dementors ebbs. Not that either of us is exactly fizzing magical mojo right now: I think the Dementors just assume that we're staff.

"God, I _really_ want to try fiendfyre," I mutter, and march forward. I have to lean into it. Even past Sid and Monkey there's a miasma of gloom: I have to dig deep into my reserves of bloody-mindedness to get past it. I grab Sirius by the elbow. He's at _grave_ risk during this bit. They can't _make_ him relive his worst memories with his Patronus lit, but they don't have to. He's quite capable of having flashbacks all of his own. The brand-new brain I have these days doesn't have a lifetime of trauma burnt into it, and my theory that I'd be thereby less vulnerable is holding up. It still _sucks_ to be anywhere near these things.

"Stay with me, Mr. Glitter," I say, and he edges closer as we're walking. He's keeping Monkey going nicely, and I shift my arm to hold him around the shoulders and hug him close. Don't know if it's doing any good, but it can't hurt, right? He's a lefty, so it's not like I'm fouling his wand arm.

We get out into the open, and we're the centre of a swarm of darkness, creeping decay and cold. I turn us left, so I'm between Sirius and the Dementors.

Monkey comes and perches on Sirius's shoulder, while Sid goes into overdrive, feinting strikes at any Dementor that comes close. "_G'yaaaan! Gerrowt, thi shites! Ah'll fookin' twat t' fookin' lo'a' yez"_ Parseltongue with a Lancashire accent. That's new.

The climb back up the pit of Azkaban is an ordeal: seven stories in the bitter cold would be bad enough, but we have our _charming_ companions swooping and schooling about. The stairs are narrow, so I can't keep my arm around Sirius. I have to move him ahead of me and reach up to keep a hand on his shoulder to remind him I'm here. Soft words of encouragement keep him putting one foot in front of the other, but Monkey fades out before we've got as high as level five.

Sid coils in tighter around us, bunching up like my determination. The Dementors shriek when he lashes out and _howl_ when he gets lucky and bites one: I can't see any actual injury on the thing, but from the noise it made as it fled, it definitely _felt pain_. This puts a nasty grin on my face and the example makes the fuckers back off a bit. I suppose it's too much to hope that I've got the world's first venomous patronus.

I need to lift Sirius's spirits, though. Which is why the first ever non-inside-job escape from Azkaban - in this universe, at any rate - is accompanied by me belting out cheerfully filthy songs, stamping out the rhythm as I go to ensure my footing on the stairs. "Oooon board the Good Ship Venus…"

We're passing level three when I realise that the swarm is concentrating below us. They're trying, it would appear, to drive us out. Do they think we're part of the human staff? Or do they just want the nasty, bitey, sweary Patronus out of their nice cold hole? I don't care. Seeing them cowed like this is a _lovely_ boost to morale.

It takes until halfway up level two and the final verse of Bollocky Bill The Sailor before I get a wobbly, uncertain chuckle out of him, and it's as I'm getting my breath for a rousing rendition of the Woad Song that he's able to talk. "You mad bastard. _Expecto Patronum_!"

And Monkey's back!

The Dementors back off even further, swirling down into their hole like runny shit down a drain, so we're able to give it some welly and pick up the pace a bit. We reach the roof of the fortress prison with _exquisite_ timing. We turn around and deliver the final "Booolllllocks, toooooo…. the breeeeeze!" accompanied by vigorous two-fingered archers' salutes as our goodbye to the Dementors of Azkaban. Oh, a few have followed us up like a bad smell, but they're a lot more manageable by dribs and drabs, particularly when you've got two Patroni up.

Getting down to the beach is easy. The grapnels that we hook onto the parapet are charmed to release on command and not before, the outer slope of the wall is about forty-five degrees and easier to abseil than the wooden tower I learned on in the Scouts. I slip on the icy stone about halfway down, and although I pick up a couple of bruises about the tailbone, the injury to my dignity is by far the worse.

At the bottom, on the shingle beach of Azkaban's northwestern shore, I stand guard with Hissing Sid while Sirius gets out the Zodiac and inflates it. It's too big, when inflated, to fit in the mouth of any of the space-expanded pouches and bags we had. We ruined and repaired the thing half a dozen times trying to get a shrink-and-restore enchantment to work on all parts at the same rate. There was some weird interaction between the materials and the shape and the fact that it was inflated. I _suspect_ there was also the problem of transfiguring something that of its own nature was meant to change forms, but there's bugger all in the literature. The magical world just doesn't have enough theorists to keep up with muggle engineers.

We could _probably_ have tracked down the problem and fixed it, but the level of effort needed would have caught Remus's attention. Besides, the only reason we'd not have the five minutes that the hard way takes would be because we were discovered. At which point we'd have to go active with our wands anyway.

(My original plan was to hang-glide off the top of Azkaban, about a hundred metres above sea level. That'd be enough to get us beyond that disapparation jinx before we hit the water. Experience with the boat suggests that maybe shrinking a hang-glider to stick it in a pocket wasn't as trivial an exercise as I assumed.)

"Nearly done," Sirius says as he gets the keel of the zodiac inflated, "I'll need a hand getting her in the water. You better do the engine, you're bigger and stronger than I am."

"Okay. You up to getting Monkey back in the game? Going to need both hands."

"At this point? After what we just pulled off? Top. Of. The. Fucking. World." His grin is infectious, and Sid pulses a little brighter.

It's only another five minutes before I'm pulling the starter cord, and the motor catches on the second pull, muffled by the runes I carved around the exhaust. "I name this ship HMS Fuckery, may gawd bless 'er and all who sail in 'er."

As we pull away from the beach and the alarm spells on the island, Sirius emblazons the name on the prow in glowing red-and-gold letters. Then, for good measure, conjures a mast with a jolly roger flying from it. Monkey swarms up it and screams his defiance back at the shore.

"Arrr, matey!" Sirius cries, saluting the monkey, as I twist the throttle and get us up to speed and heading for the horizon. Getting the thermos of cocoa open one-handed is an old and much-practised skill, even if I don't have the muscle-memory of it established in this body.

We're only going a few miles in this thing before we scuttle her and apparate back into the sky. Get above the height brooms fail at, and you deprive the aurors of the stable platform they need to cast tracking charms. So we might as well get what fun out of it that we can. "Avast, ye swabs!" I yell out between swigs of warming, chili-laced cocoa, "Hast seen a white whale?"

"Arrrrrrr!" Sirius agrees. Then, after a moment of cross-eyed concentration, "You were right about the flight jinx. Doesn't just cover brooms."

"Fuck's sake, Sirius." I'd have had to haul him out of the drink if the attempt succeeded. He's _learned_ Tom's flight spell, and unlike me he can actually do it without basic performance trouble. Trouble is, he ain't had much chance to practise, and what little he did get ended with bone-mending charms and doses of skele-gro. It seems that when it comes to wizard flight, brooms handle a _lot_ of the fine control for you. Although to be fair, the mid-air collision with a seagull would have happened _whatever_ flight method he was using, and I was too helpless with laughter to try any spell to soften his impact.

For my part, after much effort I can sort of do a wobbly hover-and-drift about three inches off the ground.

He shrugs. "It was worth a try." Then, after a minute or two, and some fortifying cocoa, "Did you see the rat in there?"

"No. I assumed he was somewhere on the side you searched, past the Lestranges."

"He wasn't. There was only Dolohov and someone I didn't recognise past them. Rookwood, possibly?"

I shrug. "I didn't recognise any of them, sorry. Other than none of them being Pettigrew or Bellatrix."

"We're sure he got sent to Azkaban? I'd rather hoped he'd be put in my old cell." Which was on the block _I_ searched. Sending Sirius the other way wasn't a random choice.

I take a moment to think as we scud across the light chop that's building. "They knew about Wormtail, yes? They'll have wanted to convert a cell that he couldn't just walk out of, maybe take some other measures. Whoever did the work wouldn't have wanted to go any further down inside the prison than they had to, he's probably on one of the upper tiers. Plus, they'd want a human guard looking at him regular. Rats burrow and gnaw, they'll want to watch him for that."

Sirius has been nodding along with my thinking-out-loud. "Probably for the best, I wouldn't have been able to resist gloating. Which would've given the game away."

-oOo-

Twenty minutes later, after a chain of apparitions that took in the sky above the North Sea, Duncansby Head for a brief recovery period, two separate spots in the sky over Britain, and an undignified splash into Guildford Lido to lose the falling velocity, we arrive in the garage of the house at Wisteria Walk.

The soaking we took on that last Apparation was a simple matter of physics. There's a minimum time between apparitions as you Deliberate on your next Destination, and you pick up speed while you're falling. Even the quarter second we spent in the air after leaving the boat meant we hit Duncansby Head falling at a fair clip, and had to drop and roll into the heather. If you're doing more than one mid-air jump, the last one needs to be over enough water for a splash landing. Or, rather, it does if you're not up to right-quick-smart charms work. Or, as we did earlier, parachute. Neither of us is good enough at unsupported flight to apparate while doing it, and apparating while riding a broom is in the manual under the bold print heading "DON'T". You could, in theory, pull out a broom and fly out of the resulting dive, but neither of us wants to do that in the busy air-lanes above Surrey, nor have reports of a Secrecy violation on the same night we raided Azkaban.

I rip off my goggles and my sodden balaclava. Urgently, because it's waterlogged enough that I was nearly waterboarding myself. I turn to Sirius, who's done the same. "We did it. We _fuckin' did it!"_

"We did." Sirius is grinning his exhilaration-of-survival somewhere in the megawatt range. "Just, you know, let's never do that again."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

JKR had Lupin transform only when the light of the moon hit shone through the clouds, the one time it happened 'on stage'. Which sort of implies that a werewolf who stays indoors once a month might as well not be a lycanthrope. That clearly can't be the case, or the curse'd be a non-issue. So: a werewolf has to transform on the nights around full moon either when the moonlight hits or for, regardless of whether he can see the moon, some number of hours around the exact time of astronomical fullness. It also means that if they're careful they can miss some moons entirely because astronomical full moon is during daylight hours, although I suspect they suffer regardless. Remus will need his cage while he's visiting his dad, though, the 4th January '88 full moon is just before one in the morning.

The bit about the fabricators believing the cage was for a sex dungeon? Yeah. I'm told the cover stories are usually laughably thin.

Saville and Glitter: as at '87, uncaught celebrity child-rapists. Be a crying shame if Death Eaters turn up on their doorstep.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were performing Vic Reeves' Big Night Out as a stage show in New Cross in '87. The TV show they scored a few years later is all over Youtube, and if you care for surreal humour at all, look it up.

I've picked just south of the Skerries for the location of Azkaban. Duncansby Head is the closest mainland point.

I've only ever made one parachute jump, a sponsored one for charity. It was a long time ago, and I hated it. This undoubtedly shows in the description of Our Heroes descending upon Azkaban.

Hissing Sid is a Reference. Captain Beaky and his Band were Hissing Sid's great nemeses, but as any British child of the 70s will tell you, Hissing Sid Is Innocent, OK!

The TV show "Monkey" was an english dub of the Nippon TV series based on Journey to the West. Done in the less-enlightened times of the early 80s, all the voice actors put on outrageous "oriental" accents that those of us who were kids at the time found _hilarious_. It also had a theme song that absolutely _slapped_.

(Mal's favourite chocolate, like mine, is Green & Black's Ginger Dark chocolate, with their Maya Gold a close second. They used to do a Chili-infused one, but like all good things it passed from this fallen world.)

Yes, the Clink was a real prison, old and notorious enough to give its name to other jails. There's a museum on the site where it once stood. Also, I had to tear down and rebuild my mental Azkaban about a dozen times: I _think_ I've got it consistent with what's said about the place in the books while still keeping a 'mad-scientist-dark-wizard-lair' feel.

I am, of course, completely disregarding the 'Black Family Tree' in the hope of making sense of the things said in the books. Andromeda has to be at least three years older than the Marauders (If Nymphadora was an unplanned teenage pregnancy during OWL year) more likely five (if she was the result of post-Newt celebration) or more, and Bellatrix has to have been close enough to Snape's age to be part of the crowd he joined, as Sirius tells us in GoF. Andromeda _has _to have been the older sister. The Blacks of Sirius and Bellatrix's generation also have to span no more than seven years, so Slughorn could have hoped to 'have the full set.'

If you want to look up the words to Good Ship Venus or Bollocky Bill, on your own head be it. The Woad Song is only on Youtube in the clean version, I checked.

The two-fingered gesture dates back to the middle ages in England: archers in particular are depicted in mid-late medieval art doing it toward the enemy. It gets used about when and where an American would raise the middle finger. The story that it comes from the Hundred Years war in response to the French cutting the index and middle fingers off captured archers is almost certainly a myth.

Finally, if you were paying attention you'll have noticed that there were more inmates on Death Eater Row than the ten who escape during Order of the Phoenix. Some of the people Mal and Sirius just poisoned wouldn't have made it anyway.

Fanfic recommendation: The Brightest Witch And the Darkest House, by Belial666. On FFN only as far as I know, it's about a muggleborn who is somewhat, but not entirely, similar to Hermione Granger. She gets sorted into Slytherin. Hijinks ensue.


	26. Who came in from the cold?

DISCLAIMER: Is the entire rich history of the world's magical folklore and traditions treated with reductionism bordering on contempt in Potterverse canon magic? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

There is still a buffer of unpublished work. It includes the now written final chapter of this part of the story, because there's no way I'm going to do The Hogwarts Years without a proper plan. Writing this fic has reminded me why I resolved, all those years ago, that I absolutely DO NOT try to write by the seat of my pants.

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CHAPTER 26

_I rip off my goggles and my sodden balaclava. Urgently, because it's waterlogged enough that I was nearly waterboarding myself. I turn to Sirius, who's done the same. "We did it. We fuckin' did it!"_

"_We did." Sirius is grinning his exhilaration-of-survival somewhere in the megawatt range. "Just, you know, let's never do that again."_

-oOo-

The Qumran Rite, Sirius Black Presiding. Has to be Sirius: there's a minimum amount of ritual purification needed before you can even start, and the aging potion that allows me to be present as Adult Mal is an immediate disqualification. So long as I stay out of the ritual space that we have marked with salt and oil-lamps and censers, we should be fine.

Sirius is dressed in undyed, unbleached linen, still damp from all the bathing (regular and ritual) that he had to do, and has been chanting, in various postures, for an hour solid. Fortunately the Rite doesn't preclude the use of a lectern, or he'd be having trouble: there are sixty distinct spells in seven different languages in the whole rite, one of which is the forty-line Old Kingdom Egyptian monster called The Hymn Of Liberation. The magic in the air is heavy, and thrums with purposeful judgement. The sound of it puts me in mind of a great rumbling engine, diesel powered and unstoppable as a supertanker.

Much as I did at Privet Drive, I've given the garage over to ritual space. (In my entire existence I've known precisely two people who used their garage for keeping their car in.) For this day's work, it meant a bit of wand-work to vanish most of the concrete floor-slab and replace it with a couple of tonnes of silver sand from a local builders' merchant. It had to be doused with exorcised water, so it's sticking to everything and we're going to be cleaning up what we've tracked through the house for quite some time.

Bellatrix is going to wake up without the Dark Mark: removing it was part of the pre-ritual cleansing. The counter-spell for the _stigma servus_ only works if cast by the slave's legal owner, and the laws it recognises and enforces are those of the Roman Republic. (Tom made slaves of his Death Eaters by having them swear a modified Gladiator's Oath.) Asserting title, in the proper form, to the abandoned slave Bellatrix Lestrange was the work of an hour or so with textbooks I hadn't read in thirty years. My university's bizarre requirement for law undergraduates to study Roman Law comes in handy in the _strangest_ ways.

If Tom wants her back he can sue me for her, assuming I can't find the legally-required _magistratum_ to emancipate her properly before then. I'm pretty sure that an auror is equivalent to a _quaestor_, so maybe Moody will oblige? Legally, her slavery is a dead letter. Magically, however, ownership is _important_.

Whatever. We have her strapped to a cedar-wood-and-calfskin litter lashed together with silken cord - ritual magic requires one to have _versatile_ crafting skills - and still unconscious with Draught of Living Death. She's been under for three days and nights, during which time I shaved her head. Mostly to photograph the tattoos and scarification on her scalp, but also because if there's any magical side effects we don't want hair in the way while repairing the damage. Sirius bombarded her with cleaning and freshening charms: five years without soap left her smelling like the inside of an old man's boot. A switching spell took care of getting her into the linen shift the ritual calls for. Magic is handy for many things, and in respecting the modesty of an unconscious woman it comes through like a champ. We both want to be able to say we did when she wakes up: angry witches are no laughing matter. Modesty is relative, unfortunately. She's been liberally sprinkled several times with exorcised water, and the linen is _clinging_. We are carefully Not Commenting about that.

She needs no food nor water under the draught: it's magical suspended animation. I'm ready with a sedative potion for when the rite cleanses that effect from her along with everything else: while you do have to 'target' the Rite, it notoriously tends to splash a bit. This is one of the reasons it went out of fashion - it's impossible to be selective about what enchantment you remove. What I'm standing by with in particular, however, is my first-aid and magical healing kit, because there's more than one way this could get fiery or explodey. The hair-restoring potion - she wouldn't be the first woman to go non-linear over hair loss - can wait until she wakes up from the sedative.

Sirius comes to the climax of the Rite, a spell of seven syllables repeated seven times, and then, after a one-beat caesura, "Avada Kedavra!"

I've seen the Killing Curse in Tom's memories. The 'bolt' of the curse itself is almost invisible, barely a wriggle in the air, part of what makes it so hard to block even if you _can_ conjure sufficient masses on the fly. The green light of the spell comes without apparent source: it's a thoroughly eerie effect.

Here, in its proper context, there's no bolt. No rushing sound, just a sudden dead silence that overrules all other noise. A sublime green glow over the whole ritual space, calming like woodland sunlight where the Killing Curse is uncanny.

Sound rushes back in after a breathless moment in which the Rite does its work. Bellatrix writhes and bucks against her restraints, eyes wide, panting in half-vocalised, keening distress. Her arms strain against the straps. There's smoke curling off her scalp.

Backlash, all right. "Stun her!" while casting about for something to stop the burning.

"Stupefy!" Sirius had his wand on the lectern and is gratifyingly quick off the mark.

The ewer of exorcised water can be put to more profane uses, now, and I pour it on her scalp: need to get the temperature down _fast. _

I share a moment of mutual did-that-just-happen looks with Sirius. Bellatrix's scalp is inflamed and blistered, but the burns don't look to be full thickness anywhere. "Pass me my potions bag, Sirius."

Every time I pass an apothecary I check to see if there's something useful to be added to this bag, and there's a fair stock of non-magical supplies mixed in. While I'm nobody's idea of a trained healer, one can handle a lot with a bit of knowledge and basic kit. The trick is knowing when you need an expert. And, more importantly, when you need an expert _fast_.

Up close, I see that the Rite forced the ink out of the tattoos, and the water washed all but a few streaks of it away. I've no idea where the heat that burnt her scalp came from, sheer intensity of magic is the only guess I've got. It's ordinary burning, second-degree in the worst spots. Not curse-fire, so it responds to the over-the-counter stuff from Diagon Alley. The scarification cuts opened up, and cleansed of their magical taint I can close them up with the little bit of medical transfiguration I feel comfortable doing. God knows I get enough practise between the boys being boys and Sirius, well, being Sirius. Cuts, grazes, and blisters are my limit, but within that limit I'm well practised. She'll barely have scars at all.

"So, that happened," Sirius says while I'm working, and, after a moment or two, "What's that smell?"

I sniff. Burning hair? I have a moment of wincing sympathy about where that could be coming from on Bellatrix, with her _scalp_ shaved, before chancing to look over to where we have the Brothers Lestrange stacked. There's smoke. "Go check on Rodolphus," I say, getting my eyes back on the job.

After a moment, I hear a hearty "Fuck!" And then, "_Indephlogistico homine_!"

_That's a fire-extinguishing charm_.

**Backlash from ruining my work. I didn't say anything, I thought you'd like the surprise.**

_Honestly surprised you didn't rise as the Petty Lord. We probably weren't going to get much out of him anyway, we only wanted those two idiots as backups if Bella here wouldn't cooperate with the vault._

**Or couldn't be made to cooperate. I had her for ten years, remember.**

"His, uh, his brain caught fire," Sirius says as he comes back over. Sounding a little shaky, so I suspect it was as gruesome as it sounds. "Along with his eyes. His hair started smouldering with the heat, far as I can tell." The smell of Bellatrix burning covered up everything before that, of course.

"We probably should've parsed this more thoroughly before we broke it," I say, "Sounds like backlash of some sort. Not that I much give a shit, like, but I'd have preferred not to be surprised."

"Could we have prevented it?"

I shrug. "Stood him on his head in a bucket of ice water? We don't have the room to do the Rite for both of them at the same time." Some rituals you can do in extended spaces. This one pre-dates extension spells, though, so we don't know and prefer not to risk it. I doubt I'm going to do enough ritual magic - it's a _huge _pain in the arse next to wand, rune and potion work - to want to buy a dedicated building for it, although maybe having one available to rent might be a business idea for someone if it's not already a thing. "How long do your stunners last?"

"On her? Half an hour when she was in full health. Landed one on her the last time I saw her before she got married. She sent me a note of congratulations the next day, and warned me she'd not be got that easy again."

She's three years older than him, so that was no mean achievement when they were both teenagers. It makes his death in the books all the more tragic. Not that I'd ever be so cruel as to tell him about _that_. I reach into the bag for a sleeping potion, a fairly expensive one that gives you proper rest with - it says on the label, I'm sceptical - no hangover. It also has a calming element so any dreams you have are innocuous. "Thirteen drops, I think. She needs a full night's worth and a bit more, time under the Draught doesn't count. Let's get everything squared away before we stop for tea. Get her down in the cellar and ready to be debriefed when she wakes up, which should be around six tomorrow morning."

"Rodolphus?"

"Plastic wrap and in the new freezer."

"Is that what you bought it for?"

"Yup. Whatever narrative we end up using, the Ministry has to have three escapees accounted for. Freezing and thawing confuses estimates of time-of-death, so we don't have to keep live Death Eaters about the place. There was a contract killer who was famous for doing it, they called him The Iceman."

Sirius chuckles. "We could just turn him over frozen. You know, for the intimidation value."

"We could do that, yes. Transfigure a look of horrified surprise onto his face while we're at it."

"Paint him funny colours, no, give him _full clown makeup_."

We keep the increasingly-ridiculous suggestions for post-mortem indignities going while we clean up the gruesome bits and move Bellatrix into a medical restraint bed. Which I got from a fetish supply place, because of course I did. Had to modify it to remove the safety features, mostly the stuff to let the victim get out if their partner keels over with a heart attack. The less said about the _stirrups_, the better. Sirius charmed the absolute _shit _out of it for comfort and to handle the medical necessities. (I carefully don't ask why a notorious prankster knows catheterisation charms.)

More cleaning charms and a change of clothes: poor woman's sluices opened _right_ up when she woke up with a burning head. I'm thankful she had an empty stomach, or I suspect we'd be cleaning up puke into the bargain. As it is, the linen shift we put her in is a write-off. We could get it clean, but not _ritually_ clean. She gets a plain, long, winceyette nightie as replacement.

We're sitting at the kitchen table when we're done, tea and biscuits helping us unwind, when there's a pop of apparation from the back garden.

Questioning looks at each other as we grab our wands.

"Hello, the house!" comes Remus's voice. He doesn't sound in any way distressed. I'm guessing he's making sure not to surprise us with his unscheduled visit. While nobody has tried to whack Sirius since we made that one pair of hitters vanish, we're not dropping our guard.

"We're decent," I yell back. I hope there's nothing wrong: he's not due back for a few days yet.

He comes in, and immediately double-takes at Sirius. "New look for you, Padfoot," he says, gesturing at the head-to-foot undyed linen.

We had a plan for Remus popping back unexpectedly. It was a pretty obvious thing that might happen. "We're up to no good, as usual," Sirius says, "compartmented, but I suspect you'd approve if we could tell you."

"Parse these runes," I say, pulling a copy of the photograph out of the folder of copies I made, "no need for detail, just your first cut at what they do."

"Is that - is that someone's _head_?" he says, peering closely. "It's someone's _head_. Good grief." He turns the photo around to read the outer ring of runes, making an increasingly revolted face as he goes. "Your copy of Spellman's where it usually is?"

I was ahead of him, calling it to my hand. Takes a bit of concentration to levitate it from a bookcase upstairs while also opening and closing doors on the way. The summoning charm can't do that, so in my own home with cultivated tidy habits? My way wins, although it took a _lot _of practise to get this good. I hand the book over without comment. "Tea? Pot's still warm."

"Love one," Remus says, not looking up from the photo and the book.

He's half-way down his mug of tea - amid considerable amused glances between Sirius and me, nerd-sniped Remus is never unamusing to behold - before looking up. "Good _lord_. This is, well -" he trails off in a few phrases of Welsh that I suspect aren't terribly polite. After a moment to pull himself together, "This is _awful_. What monster -?"

"Compartmented," I say, "It'd reveal the identity of the subject."

"Do you want help getting it off the poor woman?" Because _of course_ Remus is enough of a nerd to deduce that from the grammar of the spell, although Tom's little extra twist isn't obvious unless you know to look for it.

"Already done. Cursebreaking ritual." Sirius waves a hand up and down the long tunic he's wearing. "Hence the outfit."

"Successful?"

"Entirely. Minor hiccup at the end, but Mal fixed her up in a trice."

"Do we know what happened to the object of the spell?"

I take that one. "Object and writer were two different people. Object, who commissioned the work, was present, sedated, and backlash killed him. He's currently in the locked chest-freezer in the basement."

"He didn't suffer, then? There's a pity, look you." Sometimes the fact that Remus is a werewolf _shines_ through. And then, when he's done with the rueful shaking of the head, "You're not going to use that freezer for _food_, are you?"

I over-act a shudder. "_Fuck_ no. Even if it's completely cleaned, I'd still _know_, so it's going in the classifieds when we're done. Someone who needs a cheap, freshly sterilized freezer can have one and be blithely unaware of what we used it for. Anyway, subject in the photo is sleeping it off, we're hoping for a debrief, so there might be some more grist for your mill soon."

Remus nods. He's really getting into the part of Resident Intelligence Boffin, and is completely cool about compartmentalisation. "I'll look forward to it. Look, I just popped back for a few things from my room, I'll be out of your way directly. I was never here, I saw nothing, I know nothing."

"That's the spirit, Moony." Sirius raises his tea-mug in toast. "To wilful ignorance!"

-oOo-

Bellatrix Lestrange is a good-looking woman even without her hair. Shaving her bald gave her an otherworldly, fae look, especially as thin as she is right now. Once she's fed back up a bit, she'll be back to looking like her big sister's fraternal twin: still remarkably pretty, but more like she belongs in this reality. Asleep, she doesn't have the twitchy, swivel-eyed lunatic look any more. Whether that was Azkaban or the magic brainwashing I don't know.

I suppose I should call her Bellatrix Black, really. Rodolphus admitted to Tom that she was on Amortentia at her wedding, and while magical law is utterly _stupid_ on the subject of 'love' potions, any sensible individual can see that consent manufactured under that influence doesn't found a valid marriage, civil or religious or howsoever.

How Rodolphus managed to brew the notoriously-finicky potion I have no idea. Neither he nor his brother were exactly wizards of subtlety and skill. It might be that after Andromeda, Druella and Walburga Black were unwilling to take chances. For all they were various shades of evil and/or mad, they were accomplished witches.

**Abraxas Malfoy, actually**_**.**_ **He suggested Amortentia, and supplied it to Rodolphus.**

_Why the hell would he do that?_

**Either I never knew, or you haven't eaten that memory yet.**

I roll my eyes. I really shouldn't have started thinking of the bastard as my personal shoulder devil. It means that on some level I expect him to start actually tempting. _I already knew there was beef between the Blacks and the Malfoys. As temptations go, curiosity about a dozen-year-old scandal is a bit weak._

**By itself, certainly. Besides, I could just be manifesting your fear of falling to temptation and becoming more like me. I am just a neurological epiphenomenon, after all.**

He does sort of have a point, there. I know I've harped on it enough. However: _Shush, she's waking up_.

It takes her a minute or two, along with a minute or so of pretending to be asleep while she listens for clues about her surroundings. She won't get much: I've pulled the same trick as I did with source Coldstream, but this time I've transfigured a generic NHS hospital room, sound-proofed it, and closed the blinds on the 'window'. There's just me in here with her, in a nice comfy armchair that _isn't_ generic NHS - the bulk-purchased ones they have are kind of low to the floor and I need a _little_ more presence for this chat. No harsh lights, no psychological tricks, and my wand left outside. I even went to the trouble of getting a bouquet with a cheery 'get well soon' card to put on the bedside cabinet.

I decide to put an end to the play-acting, and cause the bed to shift into its sit-up configuration. I've got the gestures for this sort of thing down to a finger-twitch, with much practise.

She opens her eyes. "Where am I, who are you, and what have you potioned me with?" Her voice is as scratchy as you'd expect after five years of screaming.

"Taking those in order, you're here in this room, call me Mal, and Dagworth's Number Four Morpheus Drops. The slightly off sensation you're experiencing _might_ be the hangover of the sleeping potion, but it also might be from getting your first decent night's sleep in five years. Not to mention having that abomination removed from your head, and the slave-mark taken off. You're thinking clearly for the first time since before your wedding, and I dare say the sensation is unfamiliar."

Her arms are relatively free: straps just below the shoulder. She pulls up her sleeve to look at her left forearm. Her eyes go wide: some shocks no amount of self-control can help with.

She turns those eyes direct on me. "Who _are_ you?" she asks, barely breathing the words. And, because she's clearly not an idiot, firing up her legilimency.

I shove the probe back gently but firmly. It's weak: between the grogginess and lack of wand she's not bringing her First XI game. "None of that, now. For your own safety as much as anything: I'm a little bit changed from the man I once was, and have been known to devour souls. It's entirely disagreeable, and I don't like doing it."

**You'd be outnumbered if nothing else.**

_Like she'd be on your side after what you did to her, dickhead. _

I'm not actually that sure, yet. I mean, I'd be at least willing to consider 'enemy-of-my-enemy' for someone who pulled me out of the shit to the extent I've done for this woman, but then I haven't had over ten years of mental slavery warping my personality. The _important_ thing is that direct mind-to-mind contact with a trained legilimens is not a fight I want unless I've rigged the game _thoroughly_. I've got things _nobody_ can be allowed to know, least of all someone I'm _this _unsure of. Tom almost certainly can't try and get involved - but _almost_ isn't _absolutely_.

"Eat. Souls." The tone is sceptical, but she doesn't try the legilimency again.

"It's as good a way to describe the process as the english language offers. I dare say you could find better in the language of old Egypt, they had a more nuanced view of such things."

"Is this some muggle place?" She's looking around as she changes the subject. The decor is certainly nothing you'd likely see in the magical parts of the world.

"A transfigured copy of one. The location of which you may or may not learn later, it all depends on the choices you make. However, you mentioned potions. You might want this one. Hair restorer: we shaved your head as part of the cursebreaking." I levitate the phial over to her.

She takes hold of it, but doesn't go any further. A sceptical look.

"Oh, come on. You're disarmed and tied to the bed. What do I gain by feeding you noxious potions and lying about it?"

She takes a moment with that. "I want a mirror."

"Thought you might." I levitate the one I brought over to her and hold it up. "If you'll permit me the compliment, you do actually carry the look off quite well."

She gives a snort of ironic laughter, as she contemplates her reflection, bending forward at the neck to see as much of her scalp as she can. The scars are _just_ visible, even though the tattoos are gone. "I felt such joy after he did that. But I _knew_ deep inside it was wrong."

I try not to let the shudder of revulsion show on the outside. The thought of being under mind-control gives me the piss shivers, always has.

More head-tilting and self-scrutiny. "You do neat work, assuming it was you."

I shrug. "The actual physical damage was minimal, as it happens. Do you remember waking up?"

She waxes sarcastic for a moment. "Having your head on fire sticks in the memory, call-me-Mal." She stops examining herself and knocks back the potion with a little moue of distaste.

I chuckle. "True. It also scrambles the brains, so I thought I'd, you know, _ask_. How _are_ you feeling? That bed has pretty much every comfort and sickbed charm we could find on it, but you've been through a lot."

"Hungry, mostly." And going to get more so: the hair she's growing has to come from _somewhere._ It's also making her look more and more like the bass player out of the Bangles. One of my early and formative celebrity crushes, so I take a firm grip on my self-control. I'm used to it: her sister looks strikingly similar - lighter hair, and a little different around the eyes - and I have to remind myself she's a married woman _often_.

"You seemed to like these back in Azkaban," I say, levitating a dish of Rum Truffles over to her. "This time without potions. They'll take the edge off while we chat, buoy up your spirits, and clear out the last of the Dementors' influence. Not to mention getting the taste of the potions out of your mouth."

"Muggle chocolate again?" She's raising a wry eyebrow.

"Strictly between ourselves, it's exactly the same as the stuff they sell at Honeydukes, just without the spellwork to cover up the use of cheap, shitty ingredients. I guarantee there's no pig fat in those. I wouldn't _drink_ the rum they use, mind, but that's because it's picked for its strong flavour and I'm picky about my drink."

"Pig fat?" I can _see_ the horrified recollection of all the times she enjoyed a bar of Honeydukes, who apparently don't give a shit that they have jewish customers.

"Scarpin's Revelaspell can be an real eye-opener if you use it on food and drink: it sees through transfigurations." I don't need to tell her that it usually takes me three or four attempts to cast it successfully, even under perfect conditions. "One of my spare-time projects is a pair of spectacles with it on, which will be a godsend when nicking recipes from fancy restaurants. But yes, pig fat. And beef dripping, and pretty much any other cheap fat they can lay their hands on, transfigured into cocoa butter. It's all one to your belly, after all, and magical confectioners take advantage of that. About the only genuine thing in it is the cocoa powder, and they probably get that from muggle suppliers, it's got the same dutching agent in it."

She shrugs, and pops a truffle in her mouth. Yeah, she likes those. Closed eyes, and savouring it. And it's not like she'll need to worry about calories for quite some time, she's alarmingly skinny. "These are good," she says, picking up another one, "I'm beginning to understand why Andromeda ran off."

"I've no idea whether confectionary was a factor, I have to say. She and Ted do seem to be happy together, though, and their daughter is someone they can be proud of. Shaping up to be an accomplished and powerful witch." And a cheeky little besom into the bargain, but that adds to the charm as far as I'm concerned. If I was thirty years younger, I'd be in _trouble_. As it is, her attempts to flirt are just _adorable_.

That makes her pause with her third truffle halfway to her mouth. "You know my sisters?"

"Just Andromeda, so far, although the precise parameters of the rest of my social life will have to wait."

She remains silent through three more chocolate truffles. "This," she says at length, "is a better prison than my last one. Well done."

"It, ah, need not be permanent. So long as you accept one fairly mild restriction and do one modest favour, you get to leave. Be nice about it, and I'll devote resources to setting you up with a new identity. And my resources are, as you might have guessed, considerable."

"The alternative?" She gives me the Eyebrow Expectant.

I keep my tone light, polite, even though I'm about to deliver a threat. "I broke three prisoners out of Azkaban, and it hadn't even hit the Prophet as of this morning. You may assume from that that I, with the help of those I work with, am quite a formidable individual. That, bluntly, I can have what I need by force. What you're buying with your cooperation is my help in making a life for yourself afterward." I leave unsaid that the alternative is not being alive at all. "And I _do_ want that cooperation: the muggles have a saying to the effect that a volunteer is worth ten pressed men."

"Refreshingly direct. The restriction?"

"In summary, that you not impair or impede my goal of destroying Tom Marvolo Riddle, self-styled Lord Voldemort, and all his works, and the social and economic conditions of which he is a symptom. I rather hoped you'd approve of that as a goal, given what he and his did to you. Whether you approve or not, it's the condition of you getting out of that bed by your own will. There will, of course, be a magically-binding contract."

She frowns. "Those things are dangerous." I notice she doesn't comment on the terms.

"They certainly can be. They're safer, and all the more binding, with complete _consensus ad idem_, of course, so you'll find what I've drawn up to be quite clear. I want you under no confusion as to what you'll be bound to neither do nor cause to be done. And as I say, it's a fairly mild restriction: it leaves open literally every other thing you could wish to do."

She thinks her way through another few truffles. "And the favour?"

"One item from the Lestrange vault. I dare say you can guess which one. And if you feel the need to strip it bare of all coin and portable wealth while we're down there, I shan't lift a finger to stop you."

She snorts with laughter at that. Then, more seriously, "You know what he's done, then?"

"Did he admit it to you?"

"Not in so many words. But I'm a _Black_. The Dark Arts are rather our _thing_. We're taught about the lines absolutely _not_ to cross. I knew what it was when he entrusted it to Rodolphus to store in the family vault. As an anniversary gift, if you can believe that."

_That does sound promising._

**I wish I'd known the Blacks were this squeamish. Her **_**and**_ **Regulus.**

_It's called common fucking sense, Tom. Common fucking sense. _

"And you didn't raise alarms with anyone, why?"

"Because if _he_ was doing it, it was clearly just _fine_. That's what he did to me, him and his ... lackeys." Her voice is under perfect control, but tears are starting to fall. I was ready for _this_, too, and float a small stack of handkerchiefs over to her. Sirius pointed out the likely culture-shock of tissues.

"What is said and done in here goes no further, Miss Black. You'll feel better if you take some time to just let it out. What you suffered was _egregious_, you deserve at least a little bit of a breakdown."

She stares at me. Hard. Straining to see me through the tears, but otherwise silent and composed. I suspect I've bought some goodwill with the form of address.

I shrug. "You don't need to preserve a negotiating position. You don't have one. The deals on offer are the deals on offer, accept or don't. It costs me nothing to wait out you having a good cry, if that's what you need."

"Strong-arm, is it?" Her control is failing her in her voice. Hoarse, wavery, scratchy.

"Of course. You're a Black, you're trained from the cradle to negotiate and manipulate. I'm hardly going to play to _your_ strengths, now, am I?"

She takes the implicit respect for what it is, and also as permission to break down and blubber for what feels like about fifteen minutes. I couldn't _begin_ to imagine what it's like for her. I turn my face away. I can't leave the room, not yet, so this is all the privacy I can give her.

**Tedious**_**.**_ Tom loses patience some time after the ten minute mark.

_How in the name of all that's holy, unholy, and everything in between did you manage to get as far as you did? This is how humans _work_. Understanding is absolutely fundamental to leading them. Or manipulating them, if you prefer._

**Fear and mind-control. Much more reliable. And it doesn't make them weak, like all this pandering.**

_Well if all you want is attack dogs because you're a short-sighted fuckwit in it for the screams and explosions and instant gratification, sure. _

"So," she says, picking up a fresh hankie once the tears have blown themselves out, "I suppose Dumbledore figured out what the - what _he_ had done?"

"Dumbledore? He hasn't a bull's notion, unless he's managed to follow the trail of what I've been doing. Which I doubt, we had his agent marked from the start, and doubled him a few months ago."

"You're not working for Dumbledore?" Genuine curiosity in her expression. She's not even bothering with ordinary self-control, never mind posh-girl _sang-froid_ or occlumency.

Here, of course, is someone I don't have to moderate my tone with, when it comes to that man, and there's every prospect that it'll help. Building rapport, if nothing else. I can't help but smirk. "Christ, no. If I _want_ any high-handed blundering done, I'll do it myself, thank you very much, and not have to put up with all the condescending platitudes. The deal-breaker, of course, is the anti-muggle bigotry. I live in a muggle neighbourhood and count several muggles as friends. The further I keep _that man_ from them, the better I'll like it."

"What."

I suppress the urge to chuckle. It's always fun to get a flat 'what' out of someone. "Oh, don't tell me you believe the hype that he's some kind of muggle-lover? He was Grindelwald's first partner in political theorising. One of his favourite aphorisms from back then is carved over the gate of Nurmengard, for crying out loud." Again, I'm assuming Rita Skeeter's not-yet-written reportage is good coin, although Dumbledore _did_ confess to the substance of it in that scene while Harry was hallucinating King's Cross Station. "Not to mention that the first time I met the man was when I caught him in the act of muggle-baiting."

"That _can't_ be true!" There's enough play in her restraints that she can get her hand over her mouth to hide the grin. Her eyes are giving the game away in fine style, though.

"My hand to the deity of your choice," I intone, raising my right hand. "Even if it turns out that _some_ of what I've been told about him and Grindelwald is malicious gossip, they were verifiably in the same place at the same time and were at least acquainted as young men. The story is that they were thick as thieves when together and indefatigable correspondents when apart, and while I haven't seen it personally I understand some of that correspondence still exists and is _damning_. There was a _reason_ it took twenty years for Dumbledore to get his finger out and stop the slaughter. And, yes, I caught him assaulting a muggle with legilimency. One of my acquaintances. You may be amused to learn that that encounter ended with him stripped naked, tied to a chair, and told in _considerable_ detail how much I disapproved of his actions. This came after I had finished investigating five years of his actions, all of similar moral character, so I wasn't in a forgiving mood."

Like everyone else I've told, she gets a laugh out of the Naked Dumbledore Story. If only the wizarding world had a stand-up scene, I could tour with it. When the laughter has blown itself out, she asks, "So you had him at your mercy?" Leaving the question obvious.

"Jackass though he is, he's held in high regard. Taking him off the board entirely would engender a level of chaos I'm not ready for yet. That's the pragmatic reason. Morally speaking, he's a bungler, not a villain. He _ought_ to be brought to some sort of justice if such a thing existed in magical Britain, but nothing he's done is a capital crime." Apart from the joint-enterprise felony murder of his own sister, but I don't want to oversell this, "Just outrageous levels of culpable negligence and incompetence. Even convicting him of that much would cause chaos we're not ready for yet. The best we can hope for at the moment is sidelining him slowly and by degrees until people wonder what they ever saw in him in the first place."

"So it's _you_ that's the muggle-lover?"

I snort at that. "All of them? No, most of 'em are complete arseholes. That said, so are most wizards and witches. I just prefer to live in a culture with enough population to have more than one theatre and opera house, more than one art gallery, more than one restaurant, more than one pub that isn't a complete _fleapit_, fashion that changes more often than every other century, the list goes on. Like it or not, we're all people. Saying I'm better than the next fellow because I can do magic and he can't is like saying Luciano Pavarotti is a better man than me because he can sing Puccini arias flawlessly and I can't."

"Who?"

"Opera singer. Tenor. Amazing voice, I've got some recordings of his you can listen to later. Not important. What _is_ important is that to believe in magical superiority you have to believe that possessing one particular talent makes you a better person than someone who doesn't have it. More capable, certainly, in that particular area, but not _better_. You have to be a dimwit to believe that nonsense once the error is pointed out to you. And to believe in _pureblood_ superiority you have to believe a lie about magic itself."

"Which is?" She looks intrigued.

"That magic, three of the seven fundamental forces of the universe," which isn't an uncontroversial statement, but definitely represents _my_ favourite of the competing theories for reasons not germane at the moment, "the forces that surround us, permeate us and bind the universe together, a universe that is at _least _twelve thousand million years old, and big enough that light takes ninety thousand million years to cross it, edge to edge. The constituent forces of something _this big_, and I'm supposed to believe they care who my grandfather is? It's like suggesting that gravity has a favourite piece of music. It's as absurd as it is arrogant: the universe is grand, and vast. We have no special place in it."

"I'm sure I didn't learn numbers that big in Astronomy class. I got good marks, too."

I give her a big grin. "Muggle astronomers. There's a lot more of them, and they have much bigger and better toys. They see further." Her eyes narrow. She has a lifetime of conditioning to get past, and I'm offering no corroboration for anything I'm saying. "Of course," I add slyly, "their superior skills and equipment don't make them better _people_ than you or I."

She laughs, and it's an honest laugh. "You argue prettily, I'll say that for you."

I shrug. "Professional training. I was a lawyer before I turned to this life of crime, breaking convicts out of prison, overthrowing nations, helping fugitive witches rob their in-laws. Thing is, there's a whole world full of interesting and entertaining things like that, and if you take me up on the new life part you can go look it up yourself. Come back and call me a liar to my face, if you like, not that you'll have occasion to. Although I will point out that the size and age of the universe are current best estimates on the available evidence, not firm numbers."

"I'm more interested in this singer you mentioned. Has he done Zauberflöte?"

"If he has, I don't own a recording. Although I dare say _somewhere_ will be performing it this year, and god knows there are a _lot_ of recordings." I grin, "Although I _did_ say the deals were 'take it or leave it' affairs, I'm willing to throw in a night at the opera as a sweetener."

"Oh, well _that_ changes _everything._"

"Thought it might," I say, deadpan, "who _wouldn't _be swayed by the opportunity of a night out with my magnificent self?"

She snorts in amusement. "Give me the mirror back, I think this potion is finished working. Also, I'm still hungry."

I make sure she has a paper plate of sandwiches in her hand, with an admonition that she shouldn't entirely satisfy her hunger for a day or two until she's built up to it. While I don't _know_ that she's underfed enough for refeeding sickness to be a risk it'd be a shame to lose her _now. _Before levitating the mirror over again. We may have the beginnings of a rapport, but I'm still not willing to put a potential weapon where she can easily grab it. Bigger and stronger I may be, but accidents can and do happen.

While she's eating, I go on, "The thing to bear in mind is that you really don't have to sign up to anything I've been talking about. Certainly I'd like to have a talented witch like you on the strength, especially one I can trust not to fall for Dumbledore's blandishments, but you're no use to me as a conscript. If you don't want to join up, all you _really_ have to accept is that for you, the war is over. And, really, what do you owe the pureblood cause? They robbed you of your free will, made a criminal of you, and left you to rot in a pit of demons. Was that what you wanted out of life?"

"What I want out of life right now is a chance to wash my hair and get my curls set right," the self-control is back in her voice, and she's occluding again, probably just to control the upset, "but I take your point. And, oh, I had my doubts before they got the potions in me. I can't remember that happening, so I was probably obliviated. I'd like to think I fought, at least. But they didn't give me that filth because they thought there was _no_ risk of me doing an Andromeda."

"I did wonder. She mentioned that you visited a couple of times. Went out of bounds during Hogsmeade weekends, wasn't it?" Andromeda vouching for pre-marriage Bellatrix is the only reason I'm attempting this, of course. If she'd been a true believer _before_ then, deprogramming would have taken more than a ritual and a bit of a chat.

"Yes. And covered up for her and Edward a couple of times when they nearly got caught shagging at Hogwarts. I felt she could do better, but he made her happy."

"Still does, if I'm any judge. You have anything against him in particular?"

"As I say, I rather thought Andromeda could have done better, but not because he was muggleborn, no. He was just, I don't know, a bit of a _lump_. Although I _was_ required to damn all mudbloods at home, of course." She takes another bite of a sandwich, thinking her words over. "As for the 'pureblood cause,' I thought it was rather oversold. Certainly, I could see the sense of the old families being worthy of respect because they were richer, more rooted in our culture. But only _in_ our culture. There was one girl in the same year as me, Hufflepuff, she was minor nobility on the muggle side of things. She could trace one line of her forebears back to one of Edward the Confessor's courtiers, and the main line of her family had lived in the same castle since shortly after the Conquest." Bellatrix snorts. "She's the reason I understood that the old families were important only in their _own_ sphere, just as her family were important only in theirs. And she's the only reason I know any muggle history at all, she was quite the buff for it."

"Binns being Binns, I don't think you know much magical history either. A lot of what he teaches flatly _can't _be true, but that's by-the-by. But seriously, what did you _want_ to do with your life?"

She gives me a flat, level stare. "Be a musician."

**I didn't know that**_**.**_

_Of course you didn't, philistine._

**Waste of a good witch, letting her fool about with music**_**.**_

_Philistine._

Ignoring Tom, because this is actually _interesting_, "What do you play?"

She looks taken aback, like she didn't expect me to take her seriously, or ask any follow-up questions. "Violin, piano, flute. But mostly violin. Why?"

"Well, if you _want_ the new life option, getting back to what you originally wanted is a place to start planning. And, you know, the muggle world is where the big audiences are." I give her an encouraging smile. A thought occurs to me. "Was that a Black family thing? Sirius is currently branching out from the harpsichord, Andromeda's a bit useful with the bull fiddle -?"

"C_ello_," she cuts me off. Which, fair enough, it was a deliberate provocation and I can tell she's annoyed at herself for falling for it, "and it's certainly normal for all the old families." She gets a sly smile on her face. "We don't have television, you see. We have to make our own entertainment."

At a guess she got that old chestnut from Ted Tonks, and there's a traditional punchline I can adapt a bit. "No television? I'm surprised magical families aren't larger."

It gets another laugh. "You know Sirius as well?"

"I helped get him out of Azkaban. While I had Dumbledore tied to that chair, I, ah, _motivated_ him to get on the trail of Pettigrew, who was alive all this time. While he was on with that, I had a quiet word in an appropriate ear to get Barty Crouch put _in_ Azkaban for breaking Barty Junior _out_. You're not the first to be broken out of that place, although your escape _was_ the first that wasn't an inside job. Which is a long story for another time. Yes, I know Sirius. He's working with me on various projects."

She looks like she wants to ask about Barty Junior, doubtless for fairly obvious reasons, but blanks her face before I'm finished talking. "And Rodolphus and Rabastan?"

"Rodolphus died when we broke the curse you were under. Riddle set it up so the backlash all went to him, and it turned out to be stronger than we were expecting. Rabastan I got for completeness' sake, but he's securely held until we need to turn him in." It was actually so there was a clean sweep for the Longbottoms' sake, as well as to prevent shenanigans with the Lestrange vault. As long as the Ministry and Gringotts think he's in the wind, they'd have to change laws to do anything, assuming the wider Lestrange family don't have measures already in place. The only finesse is going to be whether Bellatrix's death is real or faked. I'm quietly confident, on her showing so far.

"No great loss in either case." Her face takes on a hard cast for just a moment, before she gets it under control. I'm guessing that being potioned to enjoy it doesn't make the abuse less traumatic. "I want to see this contract. Read it."

I could do with a comfort break, so I leave her the document while I go potty. She doesn't need to know that there are hidden mirrors around the room so I can keep an eye on her. The shop that makes those things is doing very well out of me, not least because I keep giving them ideas for new product lines. Magic parents are getting video baby monitors decades before their muggle counterparts.

She's still reading when I go back in, so I sit down and wait quietly. She finishes with a quiet 'hmm', puts the paperwork down, and looks at me. "You said it was clear, and it is."

Nice to hear I'm still up to my old standards. I've been awarded Crystal Marks. "As I say, _consensus ad idem_ strengthens the contract. You should have seen that it really is a mild restriction on your conduct. About like giving your parole as a prisoner of war so as to have some liberty."

"I got that, yes. I could be persuaded to sign it, I think. I don't have _fundamental_ objections," _Grabbing for room to negotiate, Bellatrix, well done, shame it won't work, _"It's where we go after that that I want to know about. Let's assume that the Prophet is behind with the news as usual, and the Ministry knows I'm out. That means there's a kill-on-sight order for me." I notice she doesn't mention her late husband and soon-to-be-late brother-in-law. I probably wouldn't, in her place, although in my case more for their enthusiasm in Tom's cause. What they did to Bellatrix was fairly mild next to some of their crimes that Tom has reminisced about. We've crossed off a couple of dozen child murders from Remus's list. Still not _mine_, alas.

However, back to the womanhunt that's probably already under way, "More than likely, yes. We're going to have to fake your death as a first order of business. Unless you want the genuine article, in which case I have several painless -"

The magic flares out of her at the very idea: sparks and corposant and waving hair. Her eyes flash up from their resting dark blue to a vivid violet. "I do _not_! Whatever gave you such a dimwit -"

I hold up a placating hand. "You've lived nearly fifteen years of personal hell. Some people _would_ want to end it all, and until now I didn't know you well enough to say you weren't one of them. So with _that_ established," and hand-on-heart her suicide would be _awfully_ convenient, "We need to fake your death. I can make an _entirely_ convincing corpse and turn it in to the Ministry with a suitable legend of how I felled you and those two herberts I broke out with you. Titanic battle, ringing declamations of fell import, that sort of thing. You'd have to move a long way away under an assumed identity. Live an entirely blameless life of quiet anonymity and never give yourself away."

She's nodded along with the outline plan. From the intrigued look in her eye she wants to know how the convincing body might be made. "Which I could do. You're implying there's another option?"

"Well, instead of making a body to stand as your corpse, how about making a new body for you to inhabit and turn in the one you're currently wearing? I can even put the Dark Mark back on it." Which I totally can, I own it. Although the idea of crudely drawing it on with a felt pen does have some appeal. As for doing this for Bellatrix, I want a test candidate for doing this to a living human, and she has nothing to lose. Research ethics, what are those?

"What."

I _love_ doing that to people. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. I'm proposing to make you a new set of crude matter to wear. Although calling the products of modern, cutting-edge bioalchemy 'crude' is doing my handiwork a disservice. Side effects include becoming taller, better-looking, and twenty years younger." It's true, too. Although not better-looking by _much_, in my case. Just with looks I don't have to be thirty to have grown into. "You have to use ageing potion to look like a grown-up, of course, like I'm doing right now."

Long silence. "You can _do_ that?"

"Yep. See this body I'm wearing? Came out of the reaction vessel on 27th June, 1986."

A moment of mental arithmetic. "You're _less than two years old?_"

"Came out of the vat with a physical age of about seven, seven days and nights of accelerated growth. As for _my _age rather than my body's, a lot older, actually. My last body was fifty years old when I had a bit of an accident with it. I've also spent time as a wandering spirit, plus some subjective durations outside mortal time, so my actual _age_ is a bit of a vexed question." With the amount of Tom's life I've absorbed, it stacks up as somewhere in my seventies, although that's probably an entirely wrong-headed way to approach it.

**Stolen life doesn't count, thief**_**.**_

_Shut up, Tom._

"So you've defeated Dumbledore, let him live by your mercy, survived and returned from bodily death, casually broken prisoners out of Azkaban, and for an encore you're going to kill and reincarnate me?" She looks like she doesn't know whether to burst out laughing or swear a blue streak.

"Not a bad summary, and if you stick around you'll find out how much of a braggart I'm _not_. Just so's we're clear, you don't get killed at any point in this. You'll be in a new, fully-functional body and given the full suite of commissioning tests before we euthanase the one you're wearing now. Oh, and the process needs some modifications. The protocol was written for a male body, so unless you have a secret hankering to be a boy?" One thing both Sirius and Andromeda agreed upon about Bellatrix was that - with considerable justification - she was totally full of herself from an early age. Which makes it all the more fun to gast her flabber.

She shakes her head. Gingerly, as if suddenly worried it's going to just fall off.

I've had frequent bouts of down-the-rabbit-hole feeling since arriving in this universe, and it feels good to spread it around a bit. "No? Well then. We'll have to spend some time on that. You'll be wanting to review the ritual magic elements yourself, of course, and any suggestions you have for the necessary changes will be welcome. Putting your own work into the thing will considerably improve your chances of it working perfectly first time."

"How are you going to, what, swap me from one body to the other?"

"There's a body-swap magic, invented as a sort of poor-man's immortality for people who didn't mind having to reinvent themselves every few years. Very nasty, very dark, tends to corrupt each new body you get after you've done it a few times. When I analysed it, though, all of the dark stuff was to overcome the target's resistance to having his body stolen. With consent or guaranteed absence of resistance, it's a much more, shall we say, streamlined spell. Being in a body you actually _own_ reduces the side-effect profile to nil, too, so you'll have to pay me a nominal sum to establish absolute property rights over the supplies that go into it. Still difficult, and we might have to suffer through a couple of failed attempts before we get it right, but doable." If she can't manage it herself, I can possess the new body and swap with her, then just hop back into my own flesh, but it shouldn't come to that. Like possession, it builds on legilimency, so she's got the foundations at least.

Long silence. Clearly, she's thinking through the implications. I can tell because the normal sense of presence I get from an occluded mind vanishes behind _deep_ occlumency. It's good for times when you have to think clearly and dispassionately. At length, in a small voice. "I'll sign the contract." Then, more boldly, "I was concerned that you were a fool. To take on the Dark Lord? However, if you're not the braggart you sound like..? I think I shall stick around long enough to confirm everything you've told me. If it's all true..." She trails off, and then smiles slyly. "Is there a Mrs. Call-me-Mal?"

I can't help it: I laugh out loud. "Why_ever_ do you want to know?"

"You _did _ask me out, Call-me-Mal."

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Roman law of the period the Stigma Servus is from (in this fic, at least) has some strange ideas - to modern eyes - on how property rights arise and are transferred. Mal owns Bellatrix by _occupatio, _taking possession of an unowned thing. She's the abandoned property of a deceased intestate with no natural heirs, and the Ministry then abandoned her, as Mal sees it (and would argue in the event of litigation) to the Dementors. Mal's title will become absolute after a single year by way of _usucapion._ No, he's not looking forward to telling her any of this.

Whoever helps with Bellatrix's manumission is going to have to perform a little ritual that actually involves a wand tap - substituting for the lictor's rod in the original - and Mal is going to have to shave her head again, and give her a hat. (And a hair-growth potion, if he knows what's good for him.) Ancient Rome had a special hat for freed slaves to signify their status, and the shaving was part of the manumission process.

I swear I'm not making any of this up.

(Moody being a _quaestor_-equivalent derives from my headcanon that Wizarding Britain apes the constitution of the Roman Republic, with the Minister as sole Consul and the Wizengamot as Senate. Aurors are one of the beginning steps in the _cursus honorum_ that leads to Wizengamot eligibility: Moody is unusual in serving long enough to retire. It gives Umbridge's opposition to Harry working for the Ministry an extra resonance, too, no?)

Exorcised water: you may be as surprised as I was to learn that the rite for turning water into holy water is actually an exorcism, not a blessing. Since here it was done for non-religious purposes, the result isn't 'holy' water.

The fire extinguishing charm is built on the now-defunct theory of Phlogiston. A burning object was releasing its phlogiston, or dephlogisticating. The charm stops that process.

The Iceman was Richard Kuklinski. Charming character.

See previous author notes for my thinking on the Black Family Tree. I'm fixing Bellatrix's graduation year as 1975, and she married that same year. (It makes her 32 in this chapter, she was old for her school year). Andromeda was class of '72, and Nymphadora was the result of post-NEWT, successful-elopement celebration, born between March and August 1973. Lucius graduated in '72-'74 (he was a prefect the year Snape was Sorted), and Narcissa was one of the youngest in the class of '76: they either took a while to get married or Draco took a while to turn up (earliest he can have been born is 1 September 1979.) The Marauders, Snape and Lily finish school in '77, _that_ is fixed in the books by the dates on the Potters' grave. These aren't the _only_ dates that fit with what's in the books, but they do work.

Bellatrix having a Problem with the horcrux? It's not a terribly great leap of logic to think that Bellatrix and Regulus had the same curriculum of private tuition that explained exactly why they were bad. Sirius skived off the lessons of course, (or never got them as the family rebel) which is why he didn't recognise the locket for what it was in OotP.

Dumbledore as murderer? Yes, under the law as it stood when Ariana was killed. "Joint Enterprise" and "Felony Murder" make for savage legal doctrine. By it, all three wizards involved in that duel should have hanged for Arianna's death. And much trouble (and one crappy pub) the world would have been spared thereby.

Bellatrix's classmate was claiming kinship with one of England's oldest families, who really _can_ document every step of their descent for over a thousand years. Which I mention because I've got _heartily_ sick of reading fanfics in which various families claim to be able to trace their lineage back to pre-Roman times. Worldwide there are a tiny fraction of families who can reliably document their descent much past a couple of centuries, and of the exceptional few - mostly aristocrats, but the descendants of Confucius are reasonably well documented - all but a handful peter out into obscurity or outright mythology before getting to fifteen centuries and generally considerably short of that.

Crystal Mark: an endorsement given, on application, by the Plain English Campaign. Who do exactly what they say they do, and worthy work it is too.

Changing the ritual to make a female body: numbers have gender in more than one system of numerology. Odd is male and even is female in the tradition wizarding Britain uses. Adapting the ritual to create a non-binary body abides research to extend arithmancy to more complicated numbers than integers.

I keep having to not call these new bodies 'sleeves', since not everyone has read or seen Altered Carbon. (You really should.)

Fanfic recommendation: Bookworms Notice, by Magi Silverwolf on FFN and Magi_Silverwolf on AO3. A small story, but perfectly formed.


	27. Dance a little sidestep

Disclaimer: Is the Potterverse stuffed full of utterly game-breaking magic with no stated limitations to _keep_ it from being game-breaking, the implications of which all characters blithely ignore? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

One small thing, an unsigned reviewer thought that 'groke' and 'grok' were the same word. They're not. One is archaic english, the other is martian.

Also there's one more chapter of this installment of this story, to be posted two weeks hence, after which I've got four chapters written of a different story (out of a projected ten).

* * *

Chapter 27

_Long silence. Clearly, she's thinking through the implications. I can tell because the normal sense of presence I get from an occluded mind vanishes behind deep occlumency. It's good for times when you have to think clearly and dispassionately. At length, in a small voice. "I'll sign the contract." Then, more boldly, "I was concerned that you were a fool. To take on the Dark Lord? However, if you're not the braggart you sound like..? I think I shall stick around long enough to confirm everything you've told me. If it's all true..." She trails off, and then smiles slyly. "Is there a Mrs. Call-me-Mal?"_

-oOo-

"I feel like my hair is never going to be right again." She's got a peevish tone in her voice. Bellatrix has been introduced to the muggle concepts of 'peroxide' and 'hair straighteners'. I'm nobody's idea of an expert, but I've helped enough times to have the gist of the matter.

"Well, you're getting a whole new head soon. If it bothers you _that_ much in the meantime, hair growth tonic is a couple of galleons a dose, you can have it back to rights in five minutes when we get home." She's not complaining about the completely non-magical makeup, even _praised_ me for understanding I stood no chance of buying the right stuff on Diagon Alley. The praise was, of course, buried in among a tirade about the fashion choices I made for her. Apparently she knows better than me, even after five years in jail, how a muggleborn witch might dress to accompany her new boss to a meeting. It is a proposition I had enough tact not to rubbish to her face. She had the good grace to stop with that once she saw how muggles were dressing in public, at least.

What I picked out for her was a dove-grey skirt suit, one of the few available with a longer skirt, because as far as I can tell witches - to a woman, muggleborns included - Do Not Do skirts shorter than calf-length. Out and about in Diagon Alley, at any rate. Trousers are _right out_. I bought Marks and Spencer, to go with the 'newly employed and trying to look professional on a tight budget' image I've crafted for her. So far so good, except it's the late 80s, and _everything_ has honking great padded shoulders. _That_ was the sticking point, really, even if it does conceal her build from casual observers.

Which is the real risk. Bellatrix was a well-known witch before she went to Azkaban, before she was outed as a member of a Death Eater cell. A regular in the society columns of the Prophet and Witch Weekly. A lot of people are going to be able to recognise her from build and gait alone. The trick is making them double-take and think _no, not her after all_.

The less said about the Underwear Argument - it deserves capital letters - the better. Apparently, among pureblood witches, stays and pantalettes didn't die with the 19th century. (I only know what stays even _are _from late-night trips down the Youtube/Wikipedia rabbit-holes. Where you'd buy such things I have no idea.) I'm going to guess that they died out for good reason because she shut up after a brief period of wearing the modern stuff. Plus point: not being laced up like a joint of meat _also_ changes her carriage and gait slightly, which will throw off even people who knew her quite well.

The hair, though, has been the subject of a great deal of complaining from the get-go. "Potion hair is never quite the same as natural-grown. Even if it _were_, It's the _principle_ of the thing. I wouldn't expect a mere _man_ to understand. I'm also not used to all these m- _crowds._" It's the first shopping Saturday of the New Year and the January Sales: London _is_ pretty busy.

We're walking down Charing Cross Road toward the Leaky Cauldron. Detection of apparition and floo network monitoring is too manpower-intensive to do in normal times. The day that the escape of three fearsome Death Eaters breaks in the Prophet is not normal times. Since she's _one_ of those fearsome Death Eaters and I don't have a license, we've taken the train rather than get caught apparating or flooing in. Bellatrix did _not_ cope well with the kind of crush you get in Leicester Square Underground on a Saturday morning. With hindsight, I should have got a cab from Waterloo. Still, the experience was character-building for her.

(We can floo _out,_ of course, we just have to ask any shopkeeper nicely and pay a sickle for the powder. The ministry thinks our home floo is in Woking, and doesn't have the password. We are _not_ daft enough to keep it lit when not in use.)

Bellatrix has been nervous the whole way. She's been raised to believe the people around her would attack her if they knew what she was. Which wouldn't be so bad, but she has no wand, just a wooden dummy up her sleeve. Today ought to rectify that last thing. There are estate wands in the Lestrange vault, and I have a scam in mind to get her original wand back.

Even so, I suppose some easing of her mind is in order. "You know witch-trials have been illegal since 1735, right? And they hanged the last witch-hunter in England for murder? 1750 or thereabouts. You go up to any of these people and tell them you're a witch, they'll assume you mean the religion. And mostly try and be polite about it. The ones that don't try will just try and be funny at you."

"They made a _religion_ out of us?"

"Sort of. I'll tell you the story later, which you'll likely find hilarious. Anyway, getting back to the point, you can't have any kind of disguise that can be dispelled. If you set a probity probe off, all I have to do is lean in and whisper that you're not a real blonde." Probity probes, like sneakoscopes, can be beaten by occlumency. The _term_ 'security theatre' hasn't been coined yet, but the magical world has the _thing_ in plenty.

She's behind me as I go into the Cauldron, but I can _hear_ the eye-roll. If anyone asks - they probably won't, I've cultivated a reputation for being a brisk shopper, hardly anyone even knows my name - she's my new secretary, working a probationary period. Next time I'm in town, the story changes to her not having worked out, not that anyone will ask.

Just inside the entrance to the Alley there's a stretch of wall that gets used for billposting. It's got three copies of each of the three fugitives' wanted posters.

"That's a _terrible_ picture of m- that horrid, scary, criminal woman." She's lowering the tinted glasses that are obscuring her rather distinctive eye-colour to look at the poster more closely. She looks _affronted_.

"Nobody looks good in those." Arrest and a few hours in a holding cell will take the photogenic shine off _anyone_.

Her tone takes a waspish turn. "Not when they take the picture just after landing a stinging hex on your - on a sensitive spot."

I make a mental note not to do that: the Bellatrix in the picture has a definite bear-with-a-sore-arse air about her. When posh girls lose their rag, they _really_ lose it. I can't lipread well enough to divine precisely _which_ obscenities she's screaming at the camera, but they're being delivered _con_ considerable _brio_. Apparently the Ministry wants the subjects of its mugshots to look like they _belong_ in prison.

"Hmph," she says, after another long look at the poster, which comes with the usual small print warnings about not approaching the dangerous fugitive. She turns away and grabs my arm to get us moving again. A few paces into the Alley - it's actually quite quiet, magic shops don't have a January Sales tradition - she speaks up. "I did actually know that about witch-hunting. I didn't have Binns for history, there were three history teachers when I started. Madam Shafiq, who taught me, quit the year after I took my OWLs. There were rumours about her having a big set-to with Dumbledore."

I'm in the middle of thinking of a follow-up question - wasting a department as important as history down to the single crappiest teacher admits of very few innocent explanations - when I spot trouble. Or at least the potential thereof. I resolve to be proactive, since I foresaw just this possibility.

"Moody!" I call out, hands where he can see 'em. I sense Bellatrix tucking in behind me and to my right, so he can only get a clear look at her with the magical eye. I'm hoping that it works like an x-ray, and that he doesn't recognise people by their bone structure. "I read the news today, oh boy!"

"They won't be so lucky when we make _their_ grade," he growls out, giving the proper response as he stumps over, away from the gaggle of other law-enforcement mages he was with, "You're keepin' your head on a swivel?"

"Always am, Moody, always am. Got something here that I was going to owl you later." Again with the cautious movements, plucking with finger and thumb because my wand holster is a shoulder-rig and right next to my inside jacket pocket, "When you get a spare moment, no rush, have a look over that and get back to me with a time we can chat about it. Again, no rush. If I'm not in, Remus or Sirius will take a message. If nobody's in, you're taking your chances with the answering machine." I levitate a brown manila envelope over to him. Both of my housemates are completely alongside using the telephone now, although Remus is the only one of us who's read the answering-machine manual.

There's a blat of magic from Moody as he scans the envelope - no magic on it at all, there's nothing in there but a completely mundane photo - and he pockets it. "You're up to something," he says, fixing me with a Standard Issue Copper's Stare.

"When am I not?" I retort with a grin, "but ask me no questions and I'll tell you no evasively-worded half-stories about things that are outwith your jurisdiction anyway." I pretty much have to risk the lie: Bellatrix is squarely within an auror's remit, but he's not seeing any _magical_ disguise and she's doing the mousy-girl-new-to-the-job act rather well. The changes in appearance - not least of it dressing like an obvious muggleborn, which Bellatrix Lestrange would _never_ do - are taking her the rest of the way.

I get away with lying to Moody by focusing carefully on the planned shenanigans with the Lestrange money. Which is, indeed, me being up to something. That isn't, come right to it, even _criminal_: Bellatrix has a perfect right to make withdrawals. The amount she's proposing to take might be in breach of the Lestrange family settlements but that's purely a _civil_ matter. Most of the scams I have running are like that: in poor taste or breach of social convention, and at worst things I could get sued for, not prosecuted.

He snorts in amusement. As far as Moody's concerned anyone trying to be direct and candid with him is hiding something _serious_, and he finds being asked to trust someone flat-out insulting. Admitting you're up to something minor is a balm to his misanthropy, especially if it doesn't make extra work for him. "One day you're going to meet yourself comin' back, you know that?"

"I always thought I'd get killed on a zebra crossing after proving black was white, myself. Well, you're busy, and the new girl and I have an appointment at Gringotts. I'll wait for you to get in touch?"

"Yeah, you've usually got _something _interestin' for me to look at." More and more of it, recently, has been Remus's work, I'm more the salesman these days, "And you're right, I'm busy. Mind how you go, Reynolds."

"And yourself, Moody. C'mon, new girl, to the goblins!"

After a brisk walk up the Alley, a cashed cheque at the tellers' counter and the ten-galleon fee for a private appointment, we're shown to a waiting room.

Once she gets to the provided chair, Bellatrix permits herself a brief, ungraceful slump. Occlumency and ladylike poise alike take effort, and an occasional respite is necessary. After a couple of deep breaths, "How long have you known Moody?"

"About a year and a half," I tell her, after a moment to calculate, "Wouldn't say _friends_, exactly, but we get on fairly well. Civil with each other, small fund of in-jokes, that sort of thing. I'm guessing you know him better for the other side of his character?"

"Very much the bogeyman, if you were raised in a family like mine."

"And, from the other side, the chap they send to _arrest_ the bogeyman."

That earns me a laugh. She sounds a lot less wracked than she did even a couple of days ago. While there's no cure but the obvious for the malnutrition - the nearest thing I've found to a Nutrition Potion is a magically-fortified soup recipe for convalescents - non-specific healing potions make for a remarkably speedy recovery for most things and she only needed a couple of specific remedies to take care of the rest. She has a pretty laugh when she's mildly amused.

(Genuine hilarity is a great whooping bray of a laugh that she's embarrassed by. Sirius and I are both sworn to provoke it as often as possible, on general principles. The good it does her is a handy side-benefit.)

"I really did think we were done for. Just for a moment, there. Moody is _good_. We were supposed - The Dark- _Tom_ tasked us to take him down, we were studying him when it all ended and those two idiots panicked and - and -"

I make soothing noises. She no longer has the iron-hard certainty of Tom's approval to make everything she did in his cause righteous. She now sees things she laughed at _then_ as the atrocities they were all along. "I know. Hold on to that remorse, it'll weaken the curses. They might have a chance of recovery with your spiteful intent reversed." I hope. I haven't got into the attack on the Longbottoms, whether it's the curse itself or just pure neurological insult that's keeping them under. Bellatrix is rather fragile until we've made her a new, unburnt-by-trauma brain to think about her memories with, so my conscience won't let me pry. For the time being.

She collects herself again. "The point was, Barty and I, we were studying Moody. The Brothers Idiot would charge in like morons if we let them, but Barty and I wanted to be _effective_ fanatics. So we did our homework. What we learned was that behind the reputation, there was an awful lot that the Auror Office never publicised. Some of it they actively suppressed. If you got to see the whole picture, not just the reputation, you discovered that the reality was considerably more frightful than the legend. There was one theory in the Auror Office, _Tom_ had an agent in there somewhere, that Moody was a Seer. It would explain how he was able to take down his targets."

"He might be," I say, "but you couldn't prove it by me. I've seen him in action. He's commendably thorough, is all. None of the usual wizarding slapdashery, he actually turns up having done the reading and research. Which is fortunate, really. It meant that when Dumbledore set him after me, he was quite sympathetic by the time we met face-to-face. He's probably less of a tactical threat than he used to be, what with the leg and getting on in years, but those investigative skills? They age like a fine wine."

"And you just flim-flammed him like that? Called his attention to you and waved a distraction under his nose? I don't know whether to be impressed or appalled."

I shrug. "I've a lot of the same skills myself. He's used to playing against people who've no idea how he does it. He doesn't have _many_ blind spots, but that's one of them. Beyond that, he knows me and that I'm at least _somewhat_ on the side of the angels. I've given him plenty of leads and one quite spectacular arrest in the time we've known each other, so he'll give me room to manoeuvre that he wouldn't afford most people. What I did today was drop him a hint that I've got something he'll be interested in."

"That envelope you gave him?"

"Yep. Photograph of the rune-work that was done on you. If I know Moody, he'll be as outraged as I am once he's parsed the runes. At which point, I hope, he'll be receptive to the idea of helping a bit." I hold up a hand to ward off the building protest, probably about her privacy, "Which you're going to _need_. New identities are a lot easier with law-enforcement support, and it's one of the things you're buying with that full debrief you're going to do." Nothing a copper likes more than intel on the local villains.

She simmers down. Whatever she meant to say next, she's interrupted by a Gringotts goblin, to whom she gives the appropriate passwords and a smear of blood on the runestone he steps out briefly to fetch. Vault keys are for the ordinary customers. If you can afford it, Gringotts will secure your valuables with something a little better than an easily-stolen physical security token. Her presence here is going to be subject to Gringotts' shaky grasp of bankers' confidentiality, but the Ministry would have to think to ask. Moody might, but he's probably relying on staking out the Alley.

The mine-cart ride down to the deepest vault I've yet visited is pure fun. As a roller-coaster I rate it a solid 8: raw speed, whiplash turns, plenty of ups-and-downs, and the caverns are breathtaking scenery. Seatbelts would be a welcome addition, however, and some padding on the seats wouldn't go amiss. We don't pass through any Thief's Downfall, so clearly that's not an always-on security precaution.

It's when we get to the end of the ride that the shine comes off the experience. I knew intellectually that they had dragons chained up down here, but _seeing_ such a magnificent beast abused like that? The beast's misery and terror is _pouring _out of it. And what use they expect it to be when they let customers see how to deal with it, I have no idea.

When friend goblin - he hasn't given a name, because why should he? We haven't given ours - is done with the clanker things to drive the poor creature back, he notices my expression, and his ears twitch a bit. He starts looking about for the nearest cover: clearly I'm not concealing my emotions well enough, and he's not one of their vanishingly rare warrior types.

After a deep breath to get a grip, I tell him, "Pass word to either Barchoke or Gobslice that I'll be happy to design better security for this place. Lethal security, of a sort wizards won't know how to beat, that doesn't involve cruelty to an innocent animal. For now: the vault, please." CCTV and various sorts of sensors would be just the start. A few lethal gas dischargers, some motion-sensor-triggered mines, maybe an electrified floor grid. I _know_ the goblins have geothermal power, the spare parts supply contract came up very recently. Even without electronic security, I'm pretty sure razor-wire won't be that hard to enchant, not for goblin smiths.

Once we're in the vault and have a little privacy, Bellatrix is giving me a funny look. "Of all the things you turn out to be soft-hearted about, a dragon?"

I shrug. "A beast that gets a good or at least natural life, and a clean death, I'm fine with that. I'm nobody's idea of a vegetarian. Working animals, well treated? No problem. That poor thing, though? What does it take to make a dragon _fear_? They did it. They did it enough to train it to expect whatever it is when it hears that clanker sound. They're a bit clueless about things from the upper world, but it doesn't excuse _that_. I'm willing to put in a bit of effort so they don't have to do it anymore." I'm also pretty sure that it was a wizard who gave them the idea of kennelling a dragon away from the wind and sky: the natural ranges of goblins and dragons don't overlap.

"So not so much a soft heart as firm principles?" Still with that expression on her face that I can't read.

It's actually both, when it comes to animal cruelty, but I decide to pass it off. "My story, and I'm sticking to it. You go telling people otherwise, you'll ruin my hard-man image."

"Bless," she says, and then, "I'm going to need your wand for the next bit."

I step in behind her and reach around her to hold up my wand. "Here's hoping you can use this." I'm making sure I stay out of the line of fire: it's not unknown for wands to react badly to being lent out like this.

"I don't need to get much out of it," she says, taking hold. She sketches a symbol with sparks in the air, and repeats a line of what sounds like archaic French. Password, rather than incantation, at a guess. The low, angry grumble of the magic on the hoard fades from a dull roar to a barely-audible mutter, and she relinquishes my wand back to me. "This will go quicker if we get all the coin out of the way first."

What we're about to do isn't a crime: Bellatrix is still a beneficiary of the Lestrange Family Settlement. The point of having a family trust for wealth is that no one member of the family owns anything outright, so felony convictions - for example, getting sent to Azkaban for being a Death Eater - don't result in ruinous forfeitures to the Ministry. The lower orders can't afford to do this, so they get rinsed if the Law Enforcement Patrol fits them up.

Exceeding her withdrawal limits - usually enforced at the tellers' counter, visiting the vault gets around _that_ safeguard - is a civil matter, in breach of trust. Gringotts are required by contract, backed by treaty, not to interfere in anything that vault owners - and those they allow access - do with the contents during physical access. It's up to the customer to arrange any security they want past the vault door. Bellatrix explained to me that part of her marriage ceremony was accepting a geas - a really _old_ form of magically-binding contract - to respect the terms of the Settlement, and Sirius cleaned that off her along with everything else. Oops.

It's the work of a few minutes to get all the galleons and bullion into a space-expanded, tap-to-shrink chest. I have to work a little harder than someone who can just dump the effort of sorting into a charm, but I can move bulk a lot faster once I get the magic running. I dare say there's not much less than half a million galleons in here, it fills a two cubic yard chest a little over half full. How much extra the bullion adds we'll find out later.

What's left is a thin layer of small change on the floor, a pile of jewelry and other precious-metal pieces too identifiable to sell, a selection of wands from which Bellatrix picks a hickory-wood one that fits quite well, and a menagerie of nasty cursed items.

Apparently only complete headcases like Sirius's mother keep dangerous things as knick-knacks around the house: everyone else stashes them in their vault as an additional hazard for thieves. It's an article of faith among old pureblood families that goblins love gold and have sticky fingers if you don't take precautions. Goblins, for their part, think that gold isn't that interesting a metal - no native electronics industry, and you can't eat it - and they _hate_ thieves.

The cursed doodads are all too identifiable to sell easily, and Bellatrix dismisses them as mostly being useless from a practical standpoint. A lot of them are only kept for sentimental reasons. Apparently there's a hairpin with a pain curse on it - witches have a short way with sexual harassment - in the Black Vault that's kept because it was the first cursed item Bellatrix made. On the same principle that I had some of my kids' first paintings in a keepsake box until the day I died.

All of the Lestrange collection of cursèd tat, however, pales next to the Cup. It's the first horcrux I've been close to - I'm more and more convinced that what was in Harry wasn't one - and to my out-of-the-ordinary sense for magic, the sheer _wrongness _beggars belief. Inanimate objects don't normally contain minds or souls - most 'talking' enchanted items are magical Eliza programs of one level of sophistication or another - so the twisting necessary to make that happen feels ... not native to this reality. It's not one of the ones Tom enchanted to defend itself or try and resurrect him: this one was meant to vanish into obscurity and be a lifeline of last resort. A small mercy I'm thankful for.

"You're going to destroy this, yes?" Bellatrix doesn't have the same sensitivity I do, but still looks upon it with revulsion.

"Eventually. I mean, who gets fiendfyre right on the first try?"

She snorts her amusement. The safe-box I brought to carry it in is an expensive model, with some of Tom's Borgin & Burke rune-work augmenting it, and it still only _mutes_ the stomach-churning sense of _wrong_.

"More seriously, though, it's going to have to wait until you're officially Isabelle Ryan. Right now everyone's on alert, and loud flashy magic like fiendfyre is going to be noticed. This is going in a safe-deposit in a muggle bank until the coast is clearer." Literally the coast. I've been poring over maps for offshore rocks where fiendfyre accidents won't hurt anything, and I'm going to have to start physically scouting them in earnest soon.

"Isabelle Ryan?"

"You don't like it?"

"Don't understand it. Or, rather, I understand Isabelle, so I can keep responding to Belle or Bella, but why Ryan?"

"O'Ryan was a bit too on the nose," I deadpan at her. I'm open to suggestions from her, of course, but letting people pick their own pseudonyms results in, as the movie says, eight guys all called Mister Black.

It takes a moment for the penny to drop. She scoffs at the godawful pun. "I suppose that's my purported father's surname?"

"Yep. As well as the thematic fit, it's a common surname. Tens of thousands in Britain, probably more, at least as many again in Ireland, no point even _trying_ to find the father. The legend is going to be that you broke free of your attachment to Rodolphus but not your enslavement to the arsehole-in-chief, who you knew didn't really care worth a damn about muggles or muggleborn because he trusted your enslavement and confided in you. You're going to tell a _very_ touching story in your suicide note. Of your forbidden love for a handsome muggle. Of the Dark Lord chortling as he covered for your assignations. Of how Rodolphus murdered your lover, but was too stupid to realise you were carrying a baby at all, still less someone else's. And of how you made sure she was hidden and safe with a muggle foster-family. I've written your will for you, it leaves nothing but your wand and personal effects to your beloved daughter because you don't want the filthy, tainted money of the Lestranges."

She's nodding along. "Leaving them no cause to go after poor little Isabelle. It's not like she could come in here and clean out the vault, now, is it? Not like she'd know what's going to happen to all the surviving Lestranges once their notes of hand stop being honoured. And, of course, the mayhem will hamper the likes of Dives and Sanctimonia Lestrange from trying to have me killed on general principle."

"Exactly." I hadn't - when I offered to help her rob them hollow - actually realised that it was the _whole_ family's vault, not just her husband's. I'm just going to have to hope that the chaos remains within manageable limits, it's a bit late to back out now. And, as she says, it'll keep them too busy to try and hunt her down. Especially as we're only a week past a quarter day, so the vault was at its fullest until next quarter's rents come in. Three months on the loose change we've left them? Going to be _fun_.

I go on, "And you won't have a vault of your own for them to find, because you're going to be keeping your money in a real bank instead. If I'm any judge of a pile of cash, you can live off the interest for the rest of your life and leave your children rich, too. It may also take some heat off Sirius. Gives your grandfather an alternative when it comes to settling the entails, if he's willing to legitimise you. I don't know why, but he's _really_ opposed to your nephew inheriting anything, so he was rather disappointed that Andromeda refused to come back in the fold. He's hoping young Nymphadora might be more persuadable when she's old enough. With you outright volunteering, and nobody to say you nay? We might even get him to do it without telling him the truth, if we play up that angle."

"I think I can accept being remembered as an adulteress if it means Rodolphus died a cuckold as well as an idiot. As for the Malfoy thing, your guess is as good as mine. Narcissa may have eloped with Lucius, but it's not like it was an _objectionable_ match once you get past him being _entirely_ insufferable."

I wave it off. "We'll either find out or we won't. Come on, let's get out of here. We need to find a couple of complete strangers to witness your will without wigging out over who you are. How're your confundus charms?"

-oOo-

"Mother's milk!" Bellatrix has thrown open the kitchen door, and declaims this in a full ta-daaa pose. She's wearing the cream satin pyjamas that she insists were the only _acceptable_ at-home selection from the clothes I bought her.

"Once more with clarity?" I pause in my efforts with dinner. Sirius and I had been doing our usual low-effort Sunday, occasionally seeing Bellatrix as she comes in to get more tea and biscuits. I've only bothered being Adult Mal for the last half hour or so, because I need the height to do anything in the kitchen. Bellatrix was over being weirded out by me doing my own cooking by the second day: I know what I'm doing in the kitchen and she enjoys the results. Sirius just likes to watch, if he doesn't have anything better to do.

"Mother's milk. Fourth component for the ritual. It's used in some medical potions for children, so there's a full tabulation in _Numerology and Grammatica_. We make some other small changes to the rite to constitute me-as-I-am as mother to my new self, and milk makes the fourth corner of the square. Nice work on re-making the De Retz ritual, by the way, and also the alteration to get past the adult teeth coming in will almost certainly work, so we're doing it. I looked an absolute _fright_ during my tooth-fairy years."

I laugh out loud. I gave Bellatrix the file when we got back from Gringotts yesterday and she dived right in. From the looks, she's been up all night with it. And cracked the problem already, judging by the sheaf of notes in her hand, the ink stains on her fingers and the fact that she seems to have been distracted enough to pin her hair up with a pair of dipped quills that have dripped ink on one of her shoulders. I look over at Sirius while pointing at her. "Barely twenty-four hours to get alongside ritual magic she'd never seen before and isn't in the literature. And Tom used her as a mere thug. _How_ was the Ministry losing to someone that stupid?"

Sirius scoffs. "He sent _mere thugs_ to kill everyone smart enough to stop him. All the ones in any kind of authority, anyway. Got it done before anyone knew he was starting a war."

"So, mother's milk, then," I say, turning back to Bellatrix, "It might be a problem to get that for you. I do know a new mother, but I'm fairly sure she'll have weaned her littlun by now." Not to mention the vexed problem of asking Petunia for a sample. Not likely to be an easy conversation, that.

Bellatrix points to her chest. "These ought to still work, and best that _all_ maternal influences in the ritual come exclusively from me, lest we hamper it by a mixed message. Wet-nursing potions shouldn't be too hard."

"I'll take your word for it. Not something I've ever had to concern myself with. Are wetnursing potions a staple apothecary item?"

"No idea," she says, sitting down at the kitchen table next to Sirius and setting down her notes, "but you'll get some strange looks if either of you two go in and ask. I shall brew it here at home."

She's underestimating my immunity to strange looks and social pressure, but, "Point. I'll find a recipe, if we don't have one in the books we've already got. Tea?" I've honestly no idea what we've got in the library these days. The second-hand bookshops of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys do fairly well out of my impulse-buying bibliophile tendencies, not least because I buy _anything_ with a Potter Family bookplate in it. Harry's getting a library of his own for his tenth birthday.

"Please." She sits herself up primly and neatens the stack of notes in front of her. "Also, I need you to fuck me."

Sirius loses a mouthful of tea over the table. Her timing was _exquisite_. And almost certainly _deliberate_.

"What." is all I can manage, while Sirius creases up and falls off his chair to wheeze on the floor.

"Not so funny when someone's doing it to _you_, is it?" Bellatrix has a _vengeful_ smile on her face, "But I'm serious. As a widow still within formal mourning, my late husband's paternity would taint the working if I don't have _nova causa interveniens_ in the form of a completed act of adultery. Has to be you, Sirius is my first cousin and an utter arse."

"Christ, she _means it,_" comes Sirius's voice from under the table.

I'll admit it, I'm lost for words. Bellatrix is on the verge of apotheosis as the Goddess of Wind-Ups. I can't help thinking I'd be willing to give her a go _on the strength of this alone_.

"On the whole," I say, gathering my wits - she got me _good_ \- "And call me a ranting old traditionalist if you will, I'd prefer that sort of thing to be on the basis of actual mutual desire rather than as a tick on a ritual checklist. I will, of course, admit that I cheerfully _would_," I'm not a _complete_ idiot, after all, and currently running on mid-twenties biology, "but are you sure it'll do anything? Paternity is one of the three Utterly Undivinables."

(So a ritual can't be affected by it: otherwise the results would thereby work as a magical paternity test. The other two Utterly Undivinable Facts are the chastity of a woman and the magic of a child before their 131st lunar month, but they're not relevant here. Neither are any of the Contingently Undivinables.)

She gives me an eye-roll. "The obvious exception being a mother's own working, where the results aren't a divination but valid witness on my own part, which is _better and easier_ if I know in my heart that I'm sincere. And don't sell yourself short, Call-me-Mal. I'd have found a way around it if I didn't fancy you." A brief look of annoyance. I don't think she meant to say that last part out loud. Between the all-nighter and a couple of gallons of tea her verbal filter is offline, or I suspect I'd have been characterised as 'a somewhat acceptable bedwarmer' or similar.

Once I'm over the shock, which takes a moment or two, I'm amused. I've mostly got an eight-year-old libido these days, ie. none, but I have fairly extensive memories of being a heterosexual male not actively offensive to the female gender. Had she - or any other woman that good-looking - tried this on me at twenty, I wouldn't have questioned it in the slightest. Takes quite a lot of mental effort to question it at fifty and _dead_, with mid-twenties hormones in play. Once I _do_ question it, of course, it's patently obvious what she's doing. As she said, there's always a way round all but a very few problems in magic, so what could her motive be for not bothering in this instance? She's past giving in to infatuations like a teenager. At a guess, she's making a play for a bit more control over her life, possibly being in power-behind-the-throne charge around here. And, while I can totally see it coming, the thing about honey traps? _They have honey in them_. _Delicious, delicious honey._

Time to try and recover at least _some_ of my dignity, and who knows? See if I can't turn this around on her, at least somewhat. "Well, I did promise you a night at the opera, if that'll do for a first date? There has to be at least a first date, as a gentleman I simply _refuse_ to go into rut without at least _some _of the social niceties observed." There aren't a lot of options in January, but if I can persuade her that musicals count then there are more possibilities. The reaction of a pureblood witch to _Cats_ ought to be one for the books, and I think Elaine Page is still starring.

Bellatrix raises her chin in ladylike dignity. "It will be a second date, thank you very much, making coitus _entirely_ socially acceptable if my grasp of muggle mores is correct. Our _first_ date was chocolates in Azkaban."

"Doomed!" comes Sirius' voice from under the table, followed by a fit of giggles that is cut off by a yelp as his cousin kicks him.

"I also need a small child to amuse," she goes on, "your own working went very well because you had a child present and laughing. I'd like to give serendipity a helping hand, if it can be managed. A little girl, for preference."

"Tricky. The kid in my notes is local and I know his sense of humour, he'd be my first choice. Has experience, too, he won't be overwhelmed." And his identity will be a bit of a surprise for Bellatrix: I'll make it clear to her that his welfare is _firmly_ covered by her contract. Besides, I'm coming to suspect that the narrative we're selling, of Lily as The Witch Who Won (also the title of a Bestselling Book by Gilderoy Lockhart, Gentleman Adventurer) resonates with her. "The only magical baby _girl_ in this vicinity is just starting to teethe, and won't find _anything_ funny for the next few months. The only other witch child I know, her parents aren't in on any of what we're doing so they're out on security grounds."

"You mean Pandora's girl?" Sirius calls up from under the table, "Yeah, good luck getting _her_ without her mother being all over what we're doing."

"Pandora Shaughnessy?" Bellatrix looks intrigued, and her guess is an astute one.

"Lovegood, since she married," I tell her, "and if you knew her back when you'll know what a force her curiosity is."

"I did, and I do." Bellatrix says, "I liked her. But you're right, with magic _this_ interesting we'd need heavy sticks to beat her back from getting involved. Are you _sure_ you can't bring her in? _Very_ bright witch, beneath all the eccentricities."

"With a husband who's a magazine editor with a shaky sense of judgment. He'd try and be trustworthy I'm sure, but he's the sort who'd absent-mindedly publish something disastrous." God knows I like Xeno, and I have every respect for most aspects of his intelligence, but he hasn't the common sense of a hamster. It's a pity: Bellatrix is right about Pandora being an asset. And Luna would be _ideal_: she is - ironically, given her name - a little ray of sunshine.

"Nymphadora?" is Sirius's other suggestion as he hauls himself back into his chair.

I give him a Look. "We're after the innocent laughter of a child, not the ribald cackles of a young lady who makes indecent advances on men more than three times her age."

Bellatrix has a frown at that last bit.

Sirius dives in before she can say anything. "She doesn't know how old Mal really is. She's only ever seen him looking twenty-something. He gets entertainingly flustered, if you know the signs to spot them."

I'm pretty sure I don't get flustered, thank you very much, just concerned not to upset the girl with unduly harsh rejection. That said, having met the aunt whose unaltered personality she _strongly _takes after, I'm coming to the conclusion she knows _exactly _what she's doing, the impudent little madam.

"That's all very well, but Mal's right, she won't do for this." Bellatrix gets the smile back on her face, "Although from the sound of things I rather want to meet my niece. She seems to have the business of discomfiting males well in hand. The little boy will do, if we can't get a girl. It's not as though he's of an age where it actually matters _all_ that much."

"Well," I say, not wanting to get further into the subject, "subject to review of what you've come up with, we'll be able to proceed on the next auspicious date, which is New Moon on the 19th. Twenty-five past five in the morning, worse luck, but an early start won't kill us. Any questions?"

"Yes. How on _earth_ can you afford a diamond cauldron?"

-oOo-

Remus is post-full-moon knackered and out-of-sorts, so his arrival sounds like a car backfiring. It's pissing with rain, so the neighbours aren't likely to hear it. Amusingly, he phoned ahead to make sure he wasn't going to be 'walking in on shenanigans' as he put it.

"Good to see you back," I call out, I've been waiting out back with a nice hot mug of tea and a levitated umbrella. "How's things in the Valleys?"

Remus' own umbrella seems to have got slightly splinched in transit - clearly, it's raining in Wales as well - and it's flapping a bit at the back. "Oh, well enough. Da sends his regards, I mentioned you liked hiking and he said if you need a base camp for the Brecons, owl ahead so he can air out the guest room. He knows some good walks up there, he used to take me when I was a boy."

"Oh, good to hear, good to hear. Take him up on that in the summer, most likely. Anyway, like I said on the phone, you _are_ sort of walking in on shenanigans. You are very carefully not going to recognise our house guest, nor suggest or record in any way that her name is anything other than Isabelle Ryan. She's here being treated for a fatal condition that only alchemy can address, not that anyone's going to ask. In unrelated news, you'll be debriefing a couple of decommissioned Death Eaters whose identities you will also not record in any way beyond codenames. One's friendly and definitely not our new housemate Isabelle despite the striking resemblance. She'll need calming potions and sympathetic treatment: she'll deny it, but she's actually pretty fragile, emotionally speaking. The other is a hostile witness and you'll need to potion him to buggery to get anything. And, ah, don't worry about long-term side effects or damage. I want the fucker _decanted_, and we've only got a couple of weeks before we have to turn him in to the Ministry. I'm hoping Moody will agree to oblige as a middle-man." It's about time Remus got to do some front-of-house work, he's been hitting the books on interview and cross-examination techniques like a good 'un, and I sprung for an office Pensieve for him to use.

"Oh." He straightens up from his weary slouch. "This is a bit more than shenanigans, isn't it?" And then, after a long pause for thought, "And of course this has nothing to do in any way, shape or form with that photograph you didn't show me last week. Which was never taken, I wasn't here to see it, and this Isabelle wouldn't have appeared in it if it _had _been taken, which it wasn't."

"That's the spirit. Come on in, I'll introduce you to Isabelle, and you look like a good cuppa wouldn't go amiss. Also, your research on the Fidelius spell needs to kick up a notch. We should look into whether making it a four-handed ritual is a way of bringing it within the reach of mere mortals such as ourselves."

He stops to think again as he steps under the eaves. "It probably would, actually. It's how Lily and James did it. Sirius couldn't remember the details and the Pensieve can't scry it. I wasn't following it up because I didn't think we had a fourth wand."

"We do now, and we're going to need to guard the secret of a couple of child and adult identities being actually the same person." Best we do this early, the difficulty of the Fidelius scales with the number of people who know or potentially know the secret, and it's decidedly non-linear. A secret that only one or two people outside the ritual circle know, and only three or or four more know is even _possible,_ is about as easy as the magic gets.

"I'll get on it. If Isabelle is who I think she is, and as willing as you're implying with that nastiness off her head, she'll probably be better than me at that sort of thing. If she's free to do the work, I can just hand her my notes." He looks down at the difficulty he's having furling his umbrella, and finally notices what he did to it. "Oh, _bugger_."

-oOo-

"You are a cheeky little bastard."

I put the beers down on the table between us and let Moody take his pick, just as I let him pick which pub we met in. (The Trout Inn, just up the road from Oxford, to my nostalgic delight). "I'll have you know I'm a damn' _big_ cheeky bastard, thank you very much. Barmaid says the scran'll be fifteen minutes."

He puts a little brass Three Wise Monkeys ornament on the table, strokes each monkey's head in turn and I hear magic start to burble out of it like a babbling brook. "Privacy charm. You can speak plain. Or as plain as you ever get, like. Anyway, I think I actually need a whole new word. There's cheeky, and then there's _walking a wanted fugitive right past me in broad daylight._"

He didn't stun me on sight, so clearly he's not _too_ upset. Still, some ruffled feathers are going to have to be smoothed, here. "Oooh, you're _good_. I thought this would be a _much_ longer conversation. How'd you miss who she was? Got to admit I was worried, hence the theatrics on the day."

"I was expecting to see tattoos under the hair, would've given any disguise she tried away." He taps the NHS-issue eyepatch he uses to make the infamous Mad Eye muggle-worthy, and I file the datum about the thing's capabilities away. He goes on, after a sip of his pint, "Your photo was the first time I saw 'em up close and square-on. I found myself sympathisin' with the poor brass once I decoded the whole thing. Not a legal defence, mind, so we still have somethin' to talk about, here."

"For your general fund of information, the Qumran Rite cleared it up nicely, and her voluntary and comprehensive debriefing is well under way. Her product will be turning up in your regular packets from Remus quite soon, you'll be seeing sources Postmark and Channel, you'll be able to figure out which is which quite easily. The third one suffered death by misadventure early on, so we're getting nothing from him. Oh, that _is_ a good pint. Shame I can only have one."

"They keep it well here, yes. We do have the slight problem of how long you're keeping her and them other two pig's wanks in the wind? I'm not averse to overtime, lot of nieces and nephews come Christmas, but there are limits. And they're talking about turning the Dementors loose, which nobody wants."

"Couple of weeks, some time on or shortly after the 27th. I was hoping you could take charge of the corpses, and refuse to answer questions about who turned 'em in or where." It won't be murder: magical law still practises outlawry. The declaration was made the morning the story broke. And I suspect that if they get any kind of targeting information, the Dementors _will_ be turned loose, so manufacturing 'sightings' to shift the search away from Surrey is a non-starter.

"Cold." He's only got a light frown. It seems he had no plans of his own to bring them in alive. "Didn't you say she was cooperating?"

"She's chosen to end it all, after what they put her through. Pint of laudanum, and Goodnight Vienna. Quite the heartrending suicide note she's writing, too." It includes a gruesomely worded warning of the curse she cast, fuelled with her own death - which she'll be implying the Dark Lord taught her, to make it extra scary - so people don't ask questions about the various misfortunes her former colleagues will be suffering. The Curse of Lestrange, as it will no doubt come to be known, is going to let us get away with literal murder, and an assortment of lesser incivilities as the mood takes us.

"Can we take the accusation of being up to something as read?" Moody isn't even _trying_ to keep a straight face.

"Oh, all right. Yes, it'll be the genuine corpse of the actual lady. She will, of course, be leaving it before it dies. I cracked the ethical body-swapping problem, she's volunteered to be the first test, and I'm quietly confident of success. She's getting a new life, and says she's going to stick around to make sure her debrief is entirely complete. Plus, I think I might be able to recruit her." Not so much persuading her to turn her coat - she was never genuinely on the other side, her natural inclination being non-involvement - but to put one on in the first place. "She ain't come out and said it quite yet, but she wants revenge. Giving her a new life and some genuine freedom for the first time will add a weight of gratitude into the bargain. Can I count on your support?"

I'm actually pretty sure Bellatrix will be sticking around at least medium-term: our date went _very_ well. Which is all I'm saying about _that_. And she can't work against the war effort, so she'll probably muck in just for something to do.

Moody takes a considering sip of his pint before replying. "Within reason. Legally she was bang to rights, but I'm with you on the morality, like. She was a puppet, the real villain was the gobshite with his hand up her arse, so yeah, new life. Fine with that. The victims will be convinced she's dead, which will ease their minds some. And I'll be keeping an eye on her, thank you very much, the likes of her get fed deception with their mother's milk. It'd be nice to think you've made her a changed woman, but you won't be the first to get dazzled by a nice set o' chebs."

"I'm, ah, alive to that possibility." And they _are_ very nice, not going to mince words, "Wouldn't be the first time I've _personally_ been dazzled that way, come right to it, though I like to think I've learned from my youthful mistakes. If it eases your mind any, the first thing I did was get her to sign a magically-binding contract that she'll neither fight for the other side nor hamper ours, so long as she lives. Worst she can do at this point is make _my_ life a misery, and that only up to the point it doesn't interfere with me getting on with the war."

He gives me a long, calculating look. I can _see_ him weighing his next words carefully. "Sensible, as far as it goes, and if it's up to your usual lawyerly standards. As for setting her up, your best bet will be to put her through Hogwarts again, the way you're doing with your own new life. A lot of Ministry quill-pushing assumes what comes out of Hogwarts is gospel. I'll put it to Albus for you, he'll eat the redeemed sinner story up like them cheap toffees he's so keen on. And, if you're right about her coming over and she's sincere, which remains to be seen, I'll feel better about there being a couple more responsible adults up there. The hiring decisions lately are making me twitchy."

"That _is_ a good idea, thank you. If she's willing I'll be in touch with her new details." I've no idea if that'll be what she wants, but I have to admit to finding the idea of Bellatrix interacting with her nephew _hilarious_, "And, hiring decisions? Worse than the pet death eater?"

"Morally, no, but the way the defence job has been going? Only a matter of time before he gets a _real_ wrong 'un to go with the dullards and mental cases he's been getting."

I _could_ do something about that, but I need the job open for the 91/92 academic year so that Tom comes where we can get at him, for a long shot that's worth trying. I'll lift the curse right after, once Dumbledore hires someone acceptable. He's poaching Remus over my dead body, mind.

Moody goes on, "Anyway, since you've carefully not admitted it, how would _you_ have got our girl out, if you did it? Hypothetically, like? We need to plug that hole."

"I'm given to understand that whoever sprung her - there _will_ be a cover story that you can use as a stick to beat certain elements if you wish - took advantage of the fact that Dementors are thick as pigshit and can't tell intruders from staff. The only way you're plugging _that_ security hole is getting rid of them and staffing the prison properly with people who can think past the next meal and tell one human face from another." There are probably measures short of that which might work, but damned if I'm going to help anyone with them. I might have to spring someone else out, after all. Or get in to feed someone a nice liqueur chocolate.

"Eh, thought it'd be something like that. Pity. I'd reached much the same conclusion myself just from interviewing the prisoners. I'll make the recommendation about the Dementors, but policy like that's way above my head."

It'd also require the Ministry to actually develop some competence; neither of us are holding our breath. It occurs to me to get another dig in at the Ministry, "Root-and-branch reform of magical criminal justice wouldn't hurt, either, it'd remove the motive for rescuing morally innocent victims from hell on earth. For what it's worth, though, the methods used to get on and off the island wouldn't even _occur_ to more than one in a hundred mages, the security's acceptably tight if you're not up to the kind of lateral thinking required. Plus, you need a good strong Patronus to get away with it, which rules out most of the real threats."

Moody nods, and drains his pint. "You might not be able to have another, but I can. Same again, please. And a packet of pork scratchings, if they have 'em."

I don't complain about him not standing his round. I _have_ made a lot of work for him.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

If you're too young to remember late 80s fashion, padded shoulders got bad enough that TV comedians were straight-up mocking them. Wasn't just a female thing: everyone was cutting about with a couple of inches of foam on either shoulder.

The Witchcraft Act of 1735 made witch-trials illegal. And imposed penalties for the fraudulent practise of divination or necromancy. Until 1951, when it was repealed, it was what they charged spiritualists and fortune-telling con-artists with. (It was a defence to be a genuine spirit medium/diviner - the Act only criminalised the pretence. This defence never succeeded at an actual trial, often though it was tried. Look up the Helen Duncan case...)

Witch-trials being illegal didn't stop _unofficial_ witch-hunting, of course. The last recorded swimming of a wizard I could find (who from the evidence had hexed someone pretty badly and refused to lift it, but wasn't asking for the near-drowning he got) was 1863, at Sible Hedingham in Essex. Both offenders got six months of hard labour for what they did. It only wasn't murder because the crown couldn't prove the victim didn't die of something else: he was pulled out of the water alive, and died a few days later. Mal can't remember that case off the cuff but _can_ remember the case of Ruth Osborne, who drowned while being swum at Long Marston in 1751. The ringleader hanged for her murder.

As for the various religions that call their adherents 'witch', I really can't imagine them being anything other than a joke to the witches and wizards of the potterverse, however nice a crowd they actually are in person.

_Of course_ Voldemort had one of his best hit teams studying to take Moody down. While I've damned him for an idiot several times in this story, he wasn't a moron altogether. That study was, of course, the foundation Barty jr. would build on to impersonate the man in Goblet of Fire.

Magical Britain still retains the felony/misdemeanour distinction and forfeiture for felony. Muggle Britain abolished those in 1967 and 1870. And yes, protection against forfeiture was an early use of trust law, and before that the Law of Uses.

The star Bellatrix is also known as Gamma Orionis. Orionis, O' Ryan, geddit? Mal's sense of humour can get a little basic when it comes to puns. (If you're looking at the night sky, it's Orion's left shoulder, on the right as you look at him from the northern hemisphere.)

The cursed hairpin in the Black vault is a shout-out to Delenda Est by Lord Silvere, which I've previously recommended.

Paternity being undivinable: nearly every language has an aphorism to the effect that a child's maternity is a fact, while paternity is only an opinion. The rubrics of divination and ritual magic follow suit. (Divination is a _human_ magic, and we're a species that has evolved concealed fertility and paternity: our magic reflects that.) That it absolutely rules out 'inheritance tests', foundation of several of the most godawful Harry Potter Fanfiction Cliches, is but a happy accident. And, since poor Bellatrix spent the entire last chapter having her flabber gasted by Mal, it let her have a bit of revenge.

(It's also the case that if paternity of a child or the chastity of a woman could be conclusively established, sexism would be _very, very different._ Not non-existent: I ain't that optimistic. Most cultures care a lot about paternity and do what they can to control it, which means controlling women by eg. calling them scarlet women and sending them curse-mail if it looks like they're stepping out of line, see Hermione's treatment in GoF.)

Undivinability generally _has_ to exist or divination would be utterly _broken_. The ability to acquire concrete, ascertained information by magical means either has limits or it'd be _the_ field of study because of just how much you could do with it. (Mal is researching it for precisely this reason, and we've seen what he can do with the knowledge of the future he already has). Therefore: the amount of information you can get is constrained, and some things are either utterly or nearly always beyond reach. I drew up the Undivinable Facts - three Utterly Undivinable, and a larger set of Contingently Undivinables (things you can't find out directly but can infer if you take a little trouble over it) and they may or may not be part of the future of this story.

The Trout - just a little way outside Oxford, about an hour's pleasant stroll across Port Meadow, enough to work up an appetite - was an excellent place for a boozy lunch in the early 90s. It's getting good reviews to this day.

Fanfic recommendation: Reunion, by Rorschach's Blot (only on FFN as far as I know) from whence comes the idea of a purported curse on former Death Eaters. It's handled very differently there, of course, but the story as a whole is Blot's usual mix of hilarious and ingenious.


	28. The End Of The Beginning

DISCLAIMER Should I have actually planned this story properly rather than just writing it by the seat of my pants? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter One of a new story - see the author notes below - will drop on the usual schedule, two weeks from today.

* * *

CHAPTER 28

"I am too old for these four-in-the-morning starts." Sirius is yawning around a mug of tea.

Me, I'm not bothered: the body is tired but the mind inside doesn't need to sleep. I just pulled an all-nighter getting the heaters rigged up and tested and putting the finishing touches to the new garage floor. Twelve and a bit tonnes of coke became a hundred-mil-thick black diamond floor slab and a _very_ surprised expression on Bellatrix's face when she saw it. I wish I'd thought of this earlier, frankly: it's a superb surface for drawing and painting ritual geometries on, hard-wearing, easy to clean, and has some very helpful occult properties. I just have to transfigure it out of the way for the rare few magics that have to be done on the sand layer underneath.

I've also lined the walls and ceiling with plasterboard and insulation - getting some funny looks at the builders' merchant when I accidentally asked for brands that won't be out for fifteen years - to keep the energy bill down and add a bit of soundproofing. It took a lot less time to get the room up to temperature, too, which is why today's ritual robes - scrubs and labcoat in my case - are the lightest-weight cotton we could find.

It also let me partition off the front eight inches or so of the garage and space-expand that bit big enough to park two cars in. If you open the garage door, you see the completely muggle-worthy expanded space. To get at the ritual room, you have to come in from the house.

That lining of the room, though, is also hiding a lot of rune-work and magical geometry that makes it a permanent ritual space, defining the bounds and the cardinal points permanently and with as much precision as my carving skills can deliver. It helps ensure that any ritual work in here does what we mean it to and nothing else, by excluding outside interference. The blackboard paint is just a convenience for chalking figures and texts on the walls and ceiling, when they're needed, but it does make the room feel like a little slice of boundless infinity when it's lit by oil lamps, like it is now. It's a good ambience for doing serious magic in.

Bellatrix is making a last circuit of the ritual space: she joined me at midnight to draw the last few figures and arrange the ritual paraphernalia. The voluminous white cotton shift and undone hair make her look like she just stepped off the cover of a gothic romance novel, while the clipboard and laser-printed checklist are an anachronistic pairing with the goose-feather quill she favours. Muggle pens are 'too heavy in the hand' apparently.

She's fussing, of course. We've both checked all of this three times each already. Although she _might_ be making a seventh check purely for that little extra bit of magical oomph. With ritual magic, going ham on the details like doing things in threes and sevens never hurts at all.

I check my watch. The timing's a little fussier than the first time I did this: Summer Solstice in the Home Counties is so awash with green and growing magic that you don't need to be too terribly precise. This time, however, our Auspicious Moment is the magical upwelling as the waxing moon begins upon the precise moment of the new moon. _Much_ smaller. Every moment you miss the mark by is a moment of magic lost. I turn to Sirius. "Go get Harry up and dressed if he's not already sat up and vibrating with anticipation. It's half past four, and we're going to need to kick off in twenty minutes."

"Sir, yes sir," he drawls out, making a Benny Hill salute and heading into the house to get our special guest star. Having an integral garage saves strain on the muggle-worthiness rune-stones I installed on the property lines.

Harry took an immediate shine to Bellatrix when he came over for his 'sleepover' the night before. He might've been a bit old for the fund of silly rhymes and nonsense poems that she memorised in anticipation of cementing her position as Nymphadora's favourite auntie, but I think he appreciated the effort. He, in turn, is a polite and personable little boy with just enough cheek about him to be interesting. They got on famously: I felt a moment of pity for poor little Tonksie that her aunt never got to follow through.

After we took him upstairs for storytime and a ridiculously early night - Dagworth's Number Four has childrens' doses on the label, and Harry accepted that he had to go to sleep early if he was to be fit for school after doing Big Magic - she did a little bit of a happy dance.

"He's _perfect_," she said, in between fits of hugging herself, "no _wonder_ he boosted your working as much as he did. Prophesied child, at the centre of great events, with whatever _genius_ Lily Potter worked still clinging to him? And every sign of growing up to be a wizard to really _watch_? And a little _treasure _into the bargain? With him helping, we could probably do this in a tin bucket! With a _stick_!" She showed her working, albeit by reference to sources I didn't even know existed but that she promised to track down for me. Apparently the alchemists who helped me did a really good job, but they're not specialists like the coterie of great aunts who trained Bellatrix in advanced witchcraft and ritual magic.

Here and now, however, she's padding barefoot one last time around the bounding circle, making sure the reaction vessel is aligned just so. I've improved the design from the first one. Instead of a plain sarcophagus shape, it's shaped like a giant lotus-flower bud, so the homunculus inside gets to grow in a proper foetal position. The lid is formed so the seam follows the sculpted lines of the petals, and it's heavy and close-fitting enough to form a hermetic seal all by itself. There's a port for a two-way gas lock and filter arrangement shaped into the tips of the innermost petals, right at the top. I got the impurities down to the point where it's just got a faint yellow tint to it, almost golden. It's a decent piece of sculpture in its own right, though I do say so myself.

Apparently satisfied, she comes over, swaps clipboard for tea-mug, and leans in to my side. "Seven ticks on every line of the list," she says.

I wrap an arm around her shoulders. Need to search my feelings _carefully _over this one: I don't have a great history with relationships and had more or less given up on the whole business by the time I died. It's not helping that I don't know whether I can trust the signs and signals from _her_. She's in a position of utmost vulnerability, I don't blame her in the slightest if her first instinct was to run a honey-trap scam by way of self-protection. She doesn't need to, of course, but she can't possibly know that. "If it fails, it's not because we've left anything undone that we ought to have done. To quote a dramatist I can't recall the name of right now, it's possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That's not a weakness, that's life. There's no reason we can't try again on the next new moon."

"True. Moody will be upset if he can't have my corpse on schedule, though."

I have to bite my lip. "Don't make me laugh, woman, I've got hot tea in my hand."

"And god forbid we waste a drop of your precious tea. I've never seen anyone take such ridiculous pains over the stuff. Not that I'm knocking the results, of course, but we could have perfectly acceptable tea, nearly as good, for a tenth of the effort."

I give her a firm and manly harrumph at the _very idea_ of half-arsing so important a cup as the first one of the day. "It's that attention to detail and scientific thinking that gives rise to magic like this. Be appropriately grateful."

"And if I'm a good girl?" She looks up at me, batting her eyelashes outrageously.

"Glyndebourne Festival this summer. Picnicking and opera. Always wanted to go myself, just never got round to it before." I'll have to check the programme when they announce it, though. I'm not turning out for Wagner: three decent tunes packed into fifteen hours of production? You can keep it, unless it's the Bugs Bunny version.

"Belle! Good morning!" Harry has come in. Just as I thought he might, he must have been up and waiting for Sirius to come get him, already in scrubs and lab-coat - new ones, he doesn't fit in his first set any more.

"Harry!" She shifts from flirtatious woman to big kid in an eyeblink, abandoning dignity to get down and give the little man a welcoming hug. She's probably overdoing it a bit to help Harry get in the right mood for the magic, but I think she genuinely likes him. I certainly haven't been able to detect any artifice in how nicely she's treated him - Nymphadora _really_ missed out with this one.

I check the time after giving Bellatrix a decent interval to fuss over Harry, who develops a broad grin from all the attention. "Five minutes, everyone. Harry, you know to stay with Sirius?"

He nods, firmly.

"Make sure you watch everything though, Harry," Bellatrix tells him, "You're going to be a _remarkable_ wizard one day, and getting to watch serious magic like this is where you start learning how. Also, it's _fun_."

"Good luck!" Harry calls out. And then, "Why isn't Remus helping?"

_Because we don't want his curse in the same room as any of this_ would be the truth, but not something we want Harry thinking about. Bit of a mood-killer. "Well, Belle is doing this for the first time and I'm helping her, so Sirius's job is to look after you and explain stuff as we go along," I tell him. Sirius's job is also to keep the jokes coming thick and fast, we want Harry laughing, "Also, there's a spell made of happy feelings that Sirius and I are going to use to make sure everything goes really well, and Remus isn't very good at it 'cause he's a big ol' misery-guts. So he gets to have a lie-in, the lucky sod." Remus can do a solid mist shield, but he's been so focussed on self-control and armouring himself against rejection and misery for so long, he can't really _let go_ to the extent the Patronus requires for the full-dress version.

"Oh. Will I see him later?"

"Oh, yes, when he comes down for breakfast," Bellatrix says, "And remember to be extra cheerful at him. He's a grumpy old sourpuss first thing in the morning, he needs gingering up."

That gets our first giggle of the morning out of Harry. Off to a good start, but I'm willing to bet 'child-friendly comedy chops' aren't listed anywhere as an essential magical skill. After a moment to finish our tea, Bellatrix actually _skips_ to her starting position. "Count me in, Mal," she calls out as I take my own place, behind and very slightly to her right. My job is to watch the timing and rhythm, see that she gets the ingredients at the right and proper times, and deploy Sid to cover the critical part of the working. In theory, I'm also her prompter, though I doubt I'll be needed.

With my eye on my watch I give her thirty, ten and five second warnings, then: "Three, two, one, mark!"

The first step is filling the reaction vessel, and rather than my workmanlike levitate-and-pour to a plainchant accompaniment, she sets the carboys full of nutrient slurry in a slow, rolling, aerial dance around each other. If that wasn't enough, she braids the streams as they pour out. Her magic isn't just touching it all, it's intimately woven in. I could probably match the feat, I've had a _lot _of practise since I did this rite, but it'd come out all geometrical and machine-y. Which would serve, and have an aesthetic all its own, but not be half as pretty. The fact that she's got a fine singing voice - and enough magic left over for charms on her throat so she can sing in harmony with herself - makes my effort look exactly as pedestrian and workmanlike as it was.

The lack of humorous noises means we don't get the easy laugh from Harry, but there's plenty of time yet. He's sat with Sirius, leaning over for a one-armed hug from his godfather, watching with open-mouthed joy. Sirius is whispering commentary in his ear, and it provokes the occasional snort and chuckle.

Then it's time for the ritual lighting of censers, lamps and candles, and she kicks it up a gear.

In magic as in most things, there's always more than one way to do it. I drilled the ritual movements and actions and incantations relentlessly, aiming for a nice, efficient, repeatable precision. Bellatrix, however, sings the incantations and dances through the magic: she rehearsed against a metronome, over and over like she had a big opening night coming up. It's much more effort than I put in - was _able_ to put in, Vernon being what he was - and it's paying off in a rapid upwelling of magic that's _far_ more coherent and harmonious than I remember my own working being. I suppose I'm seeing the difference between a self-taught first-timer and a witch trained from the cradle: I executed a procedure - competently, thank you very much, and with an elegant laconic austerity - whereas she's _performing_.

Harry's watching with big round eyes and hands over his mouth. Can't say I blame him, you could put this on any stage in the land for the artistry of it, and I say that after having seen the Royal Ballet do _Giselle_ twice in the last fortnight. First time because Bellatrix had only ever seen ballet as an interlude in french opera and was curious how it worked as a production in its own right. My own appreciation for the artform not stretching much past 'hur dur pretty girls dancing to pretty music', the second time was because she wanted to see it again and I, ah, rather enjoyed her reaction to the first time.

We come to the bit of the ritual I think of as 'the intermission'. "_Brilliant!_" Harry exclaims.

"Why, thank you," Bellatrix says, popping a cheeky little curtsey. "Gentlemen, this is _your_ cue. Patronus charms, if you please."

I'm not sure which of us came up with the idea to have active Patroni for the more critical bits of the ritual, in among the week and a half of brainstorming and bracingly energetic four-cornered theory arguments, but the arithmancy suggests it's going to help a lot. Given how obscure the spell's origins are, I wouldn't be more than mildly surprised to discover that this was the original purpose of the spell, back in the days when all magic was ritual magic.

I draw myself up and focus. Getting Hissing Sid out in this place, in this company, is barely an effort, and I can see Sirius giving Harry a hug and a bit of a tickle to really double down on his own emotional run-up and follow-through. Monkey and Sid move smartly to their positions, facing outward from the bounding circle and guarding the ritual east and west of the space. Harry laughs at the antics of the two spirits, which makes them flare with numinous radiance.

Sid, per usual, starts giving off about everything in general and the prospect of violence in particular. "_Fuckin' yeah! Come at me, anycunt, I'll fuckin' twat yer one!"_

"That's _rude_," Harry hisses back.

Sid's cluster f-bomb of a response creases Harry up good and proper - swearing is _always_ funny, stroppy snake swearing doubly so - and Bellatrix turns to look at me. "He's a parselmouth?" Raised how she was, of course, her prejudices on the subject are _positive_.

I shrug. "His mother's side, maybe? Welsh ancestry, with a name like Evans. There's probably a druid or two in her family tree, and they had the secret of making parselmouths, adders were sacred to them. Seems it's the kind of magic that gets to be hereditary. I'm fairly sure there are more parselmouths in these islands than anyone suspects, it's just that most people can go their whole lives without seeing a snake and wouldn't think to talk to it if they did."

She gives me an impish grin. "You too? What with the same genes and all?"

I nod.

"You know, there's a _rumour_ about parselmouths…"

I give her a Look. "Which we won't be discussing with a seven-year-old in the room." And a smirk. "Although if you want to start a program of testing, I've got some free time later …"

"I think I could learn to _like_ this scientific method."

I bite down on the crack about her getting a snake tattoo. Small child present, after all.

She's been tapping her foot in a steady rhythm the whole while. Keeping time, obviously, "Right, time for the last piece of the working." A look at my watch, and I see she's pretty much on the money.

The genes, the milk, and the bottle of words - Bellatrix's theme was a mother's hopes and wishes for her daughter - are all pre-prepared; only the blood has to be utterly fresh and drawn during the rite. A good thing too: while expressing milk is entirely natural, wholesome even, a witch with her tits out is a bit much to throw at a kid Harry's age without a _lot_ of preparatory explanation that we haven't done.

Bellatrix practising self-administered phlebotomy - I'd remedied my lack of knowledge since last time, so I could show her how - became a regular thing over the week since we realised I'd only have one hand free at this point. Healing charms were very much her friend in the matter, and she got competent enough that she could satisfy the ritual requirement for clean and clinical bloodletting. My only role is to be ready with the cotton-wool and surgical tape, the healing spell can be applied later if needed. I levitate the silver tray with the rest of the ritual items within easy reach - two spells at once isn't hard if one of them is wandless - and we take our places with thirty seconds to spare.

The magic surges up again as the first ingredient, the swab of genetic material, drop into the vessel. It makes Bellatrix sway back to lean against me as she declaims the ritual words. I can feel what the magic is trying to say, that I am _involved_ as more than a mere obstacle to Rodolphus's paternity. That I should play the part to the hilt. Here, in the moment, I'm happy to play along. It feels _right_ to curl my arm around her and hold her close while she finishes the rite. I could make a smart remark about a pretty, sweaty witch in thin clinging cotton, but the rush of the magic is altogether more … wholesome. Sid and Monkey flare bright, uncomfortably bright, and I can distantly hear Harry cheering.

Belle - because from this point on it's important to identify her as strongly as possible with the new life in the reaction vessel - continues the ritual through the other three ingredients. She sags a little as the magical rush subsides, letting me support her as she levitates the lid on and the seals in place. They're blobs of wax with linen strips for the runes, this time, and yes, I totally crafted them to look like Purity Seals out of Warhammer. Because _nerd_.

After a moment, she stands again and turns to press herself against me, holding on with one arm around my waist. She looks up at me: there's one last thing. She takes a small linen bag of coin from the tray and presses it into my hand; I have to float my wand away to take it. Interestingly, Sid doesn't go out.

She hugs me a little tighter. "I assert that the new body we have made, and all the things and works that are in it, are mine. Let it, and them, be bought by me with these seven galleons, seven sickles, and seven knuts," and with her free hand she grabs my head and pulls my face down to hers, "and this kiss, by way of price."

I can hear Harry wolf-whistling, the cheeky little bugger.

When she lets me come up for air, I can't help the grin. It's probably the magic talking, but I really could see myself catching feelings for this woman. "I earned a tip, then?"

"After the way this went?" She pulls me down for another.

-oOo-

It's hours later, after we're all showered, dressed, breakfasted, and Harry packed off to Privet Drive, in care of Remus, so as to walk to school with Dudley. The garage is sealed up with warning tape so nobody accidentally disturbs it and ruins all our hard work.

"So, success, do we think?" Sirius asks as we settle down in the living room with tea.

"Better than the first time I did it," I allow, "I think we've room for a little quiet confidence."

Belle, sprawled across me in pyjamas and towel-wrapped hair, groans. "I am _spent._"

"You were … impressive," Sirius says. It's not in any kind of grudging tone, either. I imagine he wishes he'd paid more attention in those Black Family tutorial sessions, although I doubt the great aunts were trying all that hard when it came to the rebel of the family. Kind of wish I knew the great aunts myself. I can grind my way through theory as well as any and better than most, but you don't get nuances of performance like _that_ out of books.

She snuggles in close, and I really don't have much choice but to wrap my arm around her "Alas," she says, "I can't play it off as effortless superiority. It took a _lot_ of effort. Enjoyed it, though. Hold me, Mal."

Yeah, that magic affected her, at least as much as it did me. Possibly more. I dare say I'm in for an interesting evening. And if this is still a scam, it's a _fucking_ convincing one.

After a long silence, she speaks words that are muffled against my chest. "Sirius, you're next in the family entails, yes? Going to be in charge of vaults and settlements and so forth?"

"I am, why?"

"See that a dowry is put aside for me. I mean to marry this man."

Sirius and I exchange a look. We both want to say something, but neither of us wants to be first to start the banter and thereby look like an arsehole.

He cracks before I do. "What have you been _doing_ to that poor girl?" His grin speaks of malevolent glee at the prospect of _months_ of mickey-taking to come. Fair play, I've been mocking his romantic misadventures at every turn. Which he deserves: he let a prize catch like Charity get away from him, the pillock.

I give him as old-fashioned a look as I dare say I have ever given anyone. "Nothing out of the ordinary, thank you very much. It's just that pureblood males set such a low standard, she's quite overwhelmed, the poor dear. Also, a dowry? I'm pretty sure this is the _twentieth_ century, Belle."

She blows a faint raspberry, and falls asleep in my lap. I can feel the damp hair-towel gently soaking through the shoulder of my shirt.

There's a long silence. "You know," Sirius says, picking his words with exaggerated care, "I think she might actually _mean it_."

I've only got one shoulder free to shrug. The other is burdened with magically-exhausted witch. "She might, she might not. What she's been through, what we rescued her from? Anyone would feel a little infatuated with whoever pulled them out of shit that deep. She might think differently once she's steadied down some. I probably should've insisted she found another way around the paternity problem, but, well, you saw the effect it had on the magic."

"Don't beat yourself up over that. You've got her smile back a lot faster than mine returned, after Azkaban. Whatever you're doing for her wasn't a treatment St. Mungo's offered, oddly enough."

I _could_ point out that the Royal Ballet did more toward that end than anything that happened in bed afterward, fun though it was. Instead, I scoff, "All that says is that Belle here has better game than you. Made a move in less than a week, while you've been here over a year and barely looked in my direction, you heartless brute."

He gives me a scoff in return, and a languid two fingers. Then, "I do have to ask, though, since as she correctly points out I'm kind of soon to be in at least financial charge of the Most Knobbly And Unctuous House of Black. Mal, what _are_ your intentions toward my cousin?"

It's not actually a silly question. The mismatch between my actual age and my physical age makes most relationships problematic. _Really_ problematic for Kid Mal. So in a sense Belle, being in the same boat, is not just not problematic but kind of my only option. Which counts for nothing, of course: nobody _has_ to be in any kind of romantic relationship at all. Indeed, once you get a couple of messy breakups deep, a lifetime of bachelor ease starts to look like what you wanted all along.

Oddly enough, it's the suspicion that Belle is being a lot more cold-blooded about this than she lets on that decides me. Even if she is, she's smart, learned, witty, and good company on a night out. And, yes, gorgeous. She's entirely worth having around on her own merits, so it's really just a question of getting past that ethical lump of taking advantage of her need for a lifeline in a difficult time.

The obvious cure there is _time_. Time for her to get her head on straight and really _think_ about what she wants in life, with the benefit of an untraumatised brain. If she still wants this when she knows there's no need for manoeuvres, well, I'll see how my feelings are at that time.

Also, time for _me_ to see if therapy, the passage of years, and, yes, untraumatised brain have let me lose some of the emotional baggage that made me such a poor catch, back when. There's an age gap, sure, on the outer limits of what might be considered acceptable, but in Belle's case it's not the years, it's the mileage.

Sirius wants an answer, so I give it him: "When she wakes up I'll tell her to raise the subject again in, oh, a year and a day. Nicely folkloric period of time, that. Long enough for _anyone_ to come to their senses, if they're going to."

"You going to stop sleeping with her that long, then?" He's visibly trying not to start laughing, the arse. If he cracks up and disturbs Belle's much-needed rest, I resolve that it's going to earn him a bogwashing.

I scoff, quietly. "It's going to become mostly a non-issue in eight days and eight nights, she'll be physically eight years old most of the time. And a lot healthier in the brain department, which is the _important_ thing. If takes ageing potion, and asks me to join her, well, I'm trying to do right by her, not get canonised as a fucking saint."

Sirius has to leave the room, biting his knuckles all the way.

-oOo-

One big advantage of doing rituals in winter is that sunrise happens at a relatively civilised hour. My watch says seven forty-nine

"One minute to go," I tell Belle, "do you feel ready?"

"As I'll ever be." She's sitting in one of the living-room armchairs that we've brought in, wand in hand, and dressed in her Azkaban robe. Moody will be by later, and it's a lot easier for her to pull the thing on than for us to dress a corpse. She has towels draped across her lap: this is going to be a bit messy.

That and the fact that she's coming out of the reaction vessel nude is why she asked for me to be the only one present. No, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then it doesn't have to - we all have our personal squick limits and that's just the way it is.

She looks nervous, as well she might. She has the theory and the praxis for the spell down pat, but of the nature of things it's kind of hard to get any kind of rehearsal in. In _theory_ one might consent, or at least not object, to a body-swap. In practise almost nobody's got the strength of will required to overcome the innate attachment to one's own mortal coil. I can, but I'm enough of a special case that practising on me doesn't appear to help much. She was able to get into and out of my vacant body - with me giving incorporeal encouragement from the sidelines - but couldn't tell the difference between that and possession, which Tom taught her how to do. She _did_ seem to be absent from her own body while she was in mine, but I've never seen an active legilimentic possession from the outside to tell whether that's normal or not. Tom sulks his way throught the whole process and is no help at all, just a constant dull rumble of accusations of theft. From which I conclude he doesn't know either, he's a right know-it-all and wouldn't be able to resist airing his knowledge.

Theory says she'll form a proper attachment to the new flesh she actually owns by law and magic, but it'll get harder and harder to get in the further from sunrise she makes the attempt. Also, the chances of something going wrong rise with uncomfortable speed after the first minute or so. Again, downside of starting this on a new moon rather than summer solstice.

"Fifteen seconds. Opening the gas locks." The seals on the vessel itself are just wax ones: the real obstacle to getting the lid off will be any hermetic seal that has formed: gas locks aren't perfect pressure-equalisers. Vanishing the water in them gives us a satisfying, brief hiss.

That's as close as I dare get my magic to Bella's new body until she's in it. I'm going to have to do the rest of this the old-fashioned way.

"Ten seconds," I call out, and take a firm grip of the lid, knees bent for a safe lift. It's only thirty kilos or so, but throwing my back out at this stage would be catastrophic.

I grunt, straighten, the seals crack and fall away, and I move the lid away and out of the circle in one nice, smooth pivot.

Watch check. "Six seconds."

_More haste, less speed._ I reach down into the vessel and get child-Belle under the shoulders and knees. Feels like about four stone: she didn't have an enthusiastic little boy wishing her 'Big And Strong'. I've had plenty of practise at picking up small sleeping children. Up, turn, step, step, kneel, lay her in adult-Belle's lap. Watch check. _Just_ in time. "Two, one," and a firm nod to give her her time mark.

The incantation is brief, to the point, and in the dead sacerdotal language of a religion the Tibetan Empire suppressed with utmost brutality in the early eighth century. The original spell was objectionable by anyone's standards, but to buddhists of the period it was the foulest blasphemy. Departing from the cycle of death and rebirth at the expense of another soul? Well, it would be.

Belle touches her wand to her new body's head. Over the crown, on the throat and then on the third eye chakra. With her other hand, she lifts her new eyelids, leans in for close eye contact, and repeats the incantation.

Nothing happens for a whole second, and then her wand clatters to the floor. Adult Belle slumps, empty.

Over and above the obvious, I can tell _something_ happened. Her new body starts twitching and her pupils contract. Evenly, which is encouraging.

"C'mon, _breathe,"_ I murmur.

_Two little seconds, three little seconds, four little seconds._ I can feel Tom winding up to gloat over the failure.

I'm just mentally reviewing the steps for CPR rescue breathing when Belle 2.0 takes in a huge, shuddering breath. And then another. There's panic in her eyes, so I lift her back up and perch her on my knee. She's panting, flailing, and then seems to realise who I am and my arms are full of little girl, all slippery with the nutrient slurry and whooping to get air into her lungs as she grabs me and _clings_. I rub her back and make soothing noises.

After a few seconds, she pants out "Did it!" and slumps unconscious.

I can use magic again, and summon clean towels to wrap around her. She'll want a bath later. Probably a Belle self-care special, three hours long. It's only when I start getting a little light-headed I realise I've been holding my breath for almost a minute.

**Like an idiot.**

Once the dizziness passes I get to my feet, Belle cuddled and swaddled in my arms, only her face and feet visible where they poke out from the towels. She's showing no signs of coming round any time soon.

She's definitely _present_ in the body in my arms, and the one in the armchair is slumped and unmoving. Also still breathing. A nudge of telekinesis moves it onto the floor and into the recovery position: we want a particular cause of death for this one, and aspirated vomit isn't it. The other two are just frozen solid, after a peaceful death from anoxia in Rabastan's case. Not that there was much of him left, mentally, after Remus and I were done.

There's colour in Belle's cheeks, and I can see rapid eye movement. Time will tell whether she's out for the count or just taking a brief nap. I guess this is how we learn how normal human mind-and-soul combos react to this procedure.

Giving her a full medical can wait until she wakes up, for now "looks healthy" will do. I walk, moving gently and smoothly so as not to wake her, out of the garage and across the hall to the living room, where Sirius and Remus are waiting, perched on the edge of the sofa.

There's an obvious question in their eyes.

"Success," I say in a low tone, "but she fell asleep right after. Change the armchair into a day-bed, please."

It's while Sirius obliges me with the simple transfiguration that we hear a knock at the door.

"Moody's early," Sirius remarks.

"Go see if it's him, Remus," I add, "and if it's anyone else deal with them on the doorstep or ask them to come back later."

Half a minute and a conjured duvet later, Moody comes in. "It work?" He says, his tone surprisingly soft. Clearly Remus warned him the patient was sleeping.

I gesture down at the bundle of bedclothes. "I have the honour to name to you Isabelle Adhara Ryan, witch of this parish. Later - and I'm sure Remus will see you right for tea and biscuits while you wait - we will surrender the mortal remains of Bellatrix Lestrange into your custody."

"What're we waiting on?" He's easing himself down onto the sofa as he speaks.

Remus comes back in with the armchair that was in the garage, shrunk for ease of carrying. I'm perched on the edge of Bella's day-bed, so Remus takes the armchair rather than try and reclaim his sofa spot from Moody.

"Final checks when she wakes up, and euthanasing the aforementioned remains. I don't think this is going to catch on as a medical procedure just yet. We were able to do it because she's got the right skill-set to learn the transfer spell. And from the looks, it took a _lot_ out of her. She stayed awake long enough to say two words."

"Looks healthy enough, I have to say."

"Physically, yes. And I'm getting a strong sense of presence from her, stronger than if she was just possessing this body. I just want to be sure, yeah?"

"I'm in no rush. I'm off-shift today, so take your time. You know how I take it, Lupin."

"I do. Everyone else?" Orders taken, Remus heads for the kitchen. He's not quite so scientific about it as me, but he'll be back with a decent pot.

"So what story am I going back to the ministry with?"

Sirius leans over and hands Moody the suicide note. He speaks in a measured, formal cadence. "Today, the as-it-turned-out Widow Lestrange tracked me down where I was currently staying, gave the frozen cadavers of her late husband and brother-in-law into my custody, handed me her will and that note, and drank what I now know to have been a pint of laudanum. Whereof she died, and I respected her request to do nothing to prevent that. I sent word for you, Auror Moody, in the hope that I could prevail on you to handle the matter with appropriate respect and delicacy. Having read the note, I'm minded to see her ashes interred in the family mausoleum at Abney Park, once the Ministry has recorded her death."

"Covers all the bases, it'll do. You want any last words recorded in the official report?"

"Unless she has any ideas of her own when she wakes up, no. Or, rather, not that she didn't have any, but that I've chosen not to enter them into the official record."

"Suitably sombre, nobody'll ask follow-up questions for fear of coming off as crass. You've thought this through properly. Reynolds' work?" Moody asks, jerking his thumb at me.

"His and Belle's, yes. _My_ version had knob jokes in it."

Moody cracks up at that, briefly, and fishes a monocle out of his pocket. There are a few minutes of silence while he reads. We packed a _lot_ of disinformation and propaganda into that thing, it's quite lengthy. Nearly four feet of parchment, even in Belle's compact and tidy chancery cursive.

At length, he says, "Nothing in there that limits my follow-up actions, good. Calling 'em 'persons who gave the recognition signs of the Dark Lord's followers, both slave and free,' lets me go after the whole boiling of the buggers. Where she says that 'the Lestranges trusted no-one who lied with public denials of their willing service, or falsely claimed that their submission was unwilling' and _that_ was the reason for them escaping from their rescuers? It'll set back the efforts to clean up more'n a few reputations. As for fitting up You-Know-Who for helping nice married pureblood girls rut with muggles? _Genius_."

"Thought you might like that one," I say, "Belle added a lot of verifying details that'll make 'em trust it, too." Especially when it leaks to the Prophet, which we're going to do so that her apology to all the victims is public. She's saying sorry for not being strong enough to resist, another poke at the 'I was under the Imperius' crowd. _Those _buggers have apologised to nobody. We're still fifty-fifty on commissioning Lockhart to write The Tragedy Of Bellatrix Black to really hammer it home.

I go on, "As you might imagine, we've got a _wealth_ of insider information now, and she's coming up A-one to every cross-check we've done. Tom really did trust her enslavement, like her note says, and took her into his confidence. Shame he didn't reckon on clever buggers like us working out what he did and figuring out how to undo it once we had her in our custody."

Moody gives me a deadpan look. "_Once we had her in our custody. _Do you ever, like, switch that off?"

Sirius snorts. "It's that, sarcasm, or mad magical science with our Mal."

I flip Sirius the V-sign. "You ever stop being an Auror, Moody?" It's the obvious retort.

He snorts. "Take yer point. Reassure me that this bloodcurdlin'-soundin' death-curse is as fictional as I hope it is?"

"Completely. Little bit of psychological warfare, there. Keep 'em rattled and worried. Especially the part that implies it's a You-Know-Who specialty that he might have laid on others, they knew how peevish he could get over the slightest thing toward the end. Gives them something to blame when they keep coming a cropper instead of looking for whoever's _really_ serving them bad turn after bad turn."

"Like Dives Lestrange trying to make a withdrawal the Monday after I saw you in Diagon Alley, and finding the family vault empty?"

I give him a big smile. "The late Bellatrix Lestrange did not admit making any such withdrawal in our hearing today, but she _does_ seem a likely suspect, given the contents of her suicide note. She did not, however, have any cash on her person when she accosted Sirius this morning." Because it was in a chest under her bed. Everything we've told Moody is literally true, except the Laudanum part because that hasn't happened yet. Not our fault if the official record will imply a timing and character to those events that is wholly misleading. "Only that last fact is admissible witness evidence, of course. Everything else I said was hearsay or mere speculation and shouldn't find its way into any official record of our conversation."

Moody looks at Sirius and Remus. "He really is like this all the time, isn't he?"

"Absolutely," Remus says, "My stash of fig rolls went missing and by the time he was finished I was convinced I'd stolen them myself."

I roll my eyes. "I'd already bought replacements by the time you asked me about _those,_ you arse. Getting back to the point, if someone has lightened the Lestranges by a few sacks of gold, I don't think we're under any positive duty to help by eliminating _anybody_ from your enquiries. So we're telling you the literal truth: she did not mention the Lestrange vault for good or ill today. And - speculating here, so it's not evidence - were it to be the case that Bellatrix Lestrange made a substantial withdrawal from her married family's vault, I know of no evidence to say she didn't have a perfect right in law and by Gringotts regulations to do so at the time she did it. So, you know, no crime. Did Gringotts give up the name of the last withdrawal before the vault was discovered empty?"

Moody grins. "Bellatrix Lestrange, as it happens. Except she wasn't seen entering the bank, and I can testify that I saw nobody answering Madam Lestrange's recorded description all that day in Diagon Alley. Most the goblins will say about it is that all humans look the same to them, but the individual passed all security checks as required by their contract with the Lestrange family. Wouldn't even confirm if it was a witch or wizard, just that the clothes were 'of a typically female style'. Funny thing, it slipped my mind to ask if she was accompanied."

Attaboy, Moody. I'm pretty sure that that eye of his can see the dirty great big box of galleons up in the only bedroom we have with women's clothing in the wardrobe. We haven't yet had a chance to go see Huw about getting her set up with real banking.

He goes on, "What concerns me, though, is where she mentions her quote daughter unquote. That might make them think she handed over the cash to you fellas to give to the child." He makes air-quotes around the word 'child', which surprises me mildly. He's clearly spending enough time around his muggle in-laws to pick up a sarcastic gesture that's only just coming in on that side of things.

Sirius gestures with his teacup for emphasis, "Except, as Mal just told you, she had no cash on her when she accosted me this morning. Do record that, let it leak from the Auror Office if there's a convenient way to do so. The way Mal worded her will, it implies that she took the gold and destroyed it somehow out of sheer spite at the way she was treated. I'll be prevailing on my grandfather to legitimise Isabelle as Bellatrix's daughter. He's come around to the idea of half-blood Blacks lately. So she'll have a portion in the Black family wealth, no need for any Lestrange gold."

"What's she leaving herself, sorry, her _daughter_, in this will?"

"Her wand and any other property the Ministry took from her person when she was imprisoned, to me on trust to give to her daughter when I find her, if she proves to be a witch. She does not wish her daughter tainted with any part of the Lestranges, and not a knut of their blood money." Sirius rattles the answer off like it's a memorised spiel. Because it is. And it's true about the not-a-knut thing. We only took the _galleons_. "Assuming we can get her into Hogwarts, the official story is that she's under my guardianship."

Moody nods along, taking it in. He won't be writing any of this down, but he'll keep it all mentally filed away. He says, "The Hogwarts thing is seen to. As I promised, I had a word with Albus. He thought it was a wonderful story. Redemption, second chance and what-have-you. Ate it up. I got his owl yesterday confirming her name's down, asking me to let him know if the situation changed." We're going to have to re-admit Dumbledore to the Secret once we've got the Fidelius charms in place, mostly to stop him prying in ways that might cause us trouble if he can't remember why he has two names on the roll that didn't come via the Magic Quill.

Belle wakes up at that point, and I transfigure the mess of towels into a temporary bathrobe. It only has to last until she gets in the tub, after all. A rough-and-ready physical confirms that everything's within parameters, and she goes quickly through some simple wandwork exercises to confirm she's cognitively and magically all there. She heads off to get 'properly cleaned up', so I guess we can write off the big bathroom until lunchtime at least.

After that it's a gastric tube to get the required laudanum into her old body's stomach to match the official story. Moody does the honours with the cleaning charms. Not out of concern for her dignity, but because he's going to have to carry it back to the Ministry and doesn't want to be accompanied by the smell of piss and puke. He chuckles over the state the Brothers Lestrange are in. We didn't _quite_ let our senses of humour run riot over them in the end, but they've both got ghastly looks frozen on their faces and they're twisted up like they're writhing in agony. Let there be speculation about just how gruesomely the late Bellatrix exacted her fatal revenge: it'll fuel the fear of her death-curse.

The paperwork takes hardly any time at all: a single signed statement from Sirius records the true but misleading facts in short, declarative sentences. It's probably going to get him buttonholed by Prophet reporters at some point, but he has a lot of concocted soundbites off by heart. I've drilled him in the necessary rudeness of replying with _those_ rather than direct answers to whatever they ask.

Other than Harry, Number Four Privet Drive is getting the public story until we have the Fidelius in place, at which point we can give them a sanitised version that accounts for Belle occasionally turning up as an adult. Judging from Belle's performance with Harry, Daisy is going to get spoilt rotten. The Tonkses are going to get a similar treatment, accepting guidance from Andi and Ted about how much we tell Nymphadora.

I'm torn between dreading and looking forward to the Belle-and-Dora double act.

-oOo-

I return from walking Skriker at just before six, in time to be up and about with my day. We've a lot to do to get Belle's new life organised, and we need to have a long conversation about how much she needs to learn to pass as a mostly-muggle-raised halfblood. We might be using Fidelius enchantments to hide the deception, but the damned things aren't foolproof - see Potters, fate of - so fleshing out the legend the old-fashioned way still needs at least some effort put in.

Belle is in bed with my sleeping body. This is not unprecedented, of course. Previously, though, it's been because she went to bed with me. This time, it's two kids curled up together in bed. If you don't know the wider picture, _adorable_. Even if you do, it still _looks_ that way.

**I may vomit.**

_Oh, give it a rest. Not being able to form normal human connections is no excuse for sour grapes on that scale. You're an insult to every neurodivergent kid who had a hard life and _didn't _chuck a massive tantrum at the entire world. And it looks like there's more of this to come, so try and keep it down to a dull roar, eh?_

I'm assuming that Belle is staking some kind of claim, here. Her crack about wanting to get married hasn't been mentioned by anyone since she made it. Even if it _was_ just the post-magical euphoria talking, which I ain't ruled out, we've not yet had the capital-T Talk about the future of things that we really need. I reckoned it'd be best to wait until she was secure in her new body and the start of her new life and wasn't feeling quite so railroaded. Now that's out of the way, it looks like that chat is actually quite urgent.

I'm about to get back in my body and gently wake it up when an alarm charm goes off.

Bellatrix bolts awake and after a moment or two of blinking, calls out "Mal? Are you there?"

I let myself become visible. "Wanted me to know what it was like waking up in bed with a child?" She twitted me about that, every time I let the ageing potion wear off overnight.

She gives me a sleepy smile. "A little. I wanted to be sure of privacy so we could talk. Um. Could you stop spirit-roving? It's a bit disconcerting with you there and here at the same time."

Seems fair enough. Takes a moment to get my physical self awake, and by the time I get my crude-matter eyes open she's cuddled in closer, tucked under my arm with her head on my chest. "Good morning," she says.

The cuddling is nice, well worth being corporeal for, but there isn't a word in the english language for the emotional confusion of waking up intimately entwined with someone you know is thirty-two but who feels like a child. I now understand _exactly_ what she meant. It's compounded by currently being in a child's body myself; the memories of the things we did when we were both adults feel weirdly theoretical. Since I can't say any of that, I go with "Good morning, you. You said you wanted to talk."

"I had a dream."

"Last night? That why you came in here?" I mostly don't dream, apart from the odd occasion when I get back early and let my physical self wake up naturally. I'm a bit loath to do more than that. Between Tom's memories and my own, I've got some messy stuff for my dreaming mind to sort through. Belle's head has some spectacular horrors in it, too, so the occasional nightmare is to be expected.

"No, yesterday morning. And not while I was taking a nap. While I was," she stops to search for a word, "_between_."

I know the bit she means. It was bloody nerve-wracking. "You didn't start breathing for maybe five or six seconds. You probably don't want to read anything into it, anoxia does funny things to the brain."

"It didn't _feel_ like a dream. I met three women. _Old_ women. They didn't say anything, but one of them, she had a spindle. And she gave me a needle."

The shiver is involuntary, and I'm not quick enough to suppress it entirely. The goosebumps I can't do anything about.

Belle, who nobody ever accused of not being sharp, notices at once. "You know what it _means_!"

"Possibly. It's nothing we should speak aloud about, to anyone. Probably not even each other." I should have stayed in spirit form for this conversation. I'm _afraid_. Not just for the obvious implications: communications from the likes of them are seldom well-omened.

I start pacing my breathing: as the body goes, so goes the mind, and I'm going to need to be in _control_ for this.

Belle is the first to break the long silence. "I was with those women a lot longer than six seconds. Long enough to convey _meaning_. I had a proper education, Mal. Three women, with needle-and-thread symbolism. They're _known_. And, now, how you reacted to me telling you, you clearly know it too. You mentioned being outside mortal time, but you've been cagey about what you saw there. Did you meet them too?"

I take my time over it, although she _has_ caught me flat-footed with this. "Whatever I experienced, it wasn't so … personal. I was, in every meaningful sense of the word, dead at the time, it was all very surreal. I wrote it off, at first, as the hallucinations of a dying brain. Then things got. Hmm. Look, put it this way, if you're suggesting what I think you are, I interpreted my _much_ more obscure experience as amounting to something very similar, whenever I speculated about whether it was real.

"But then I found myself back in, well, consensus reality, with a very real problem in front of me and very limited resources with which to address it. Wasn't even corporeal to start with, had to do some pretty shady things at the beginning. I figured that if there _was_ any truth in what I experienced, which I wasn't sure there _was_, well, I was supposed to mend something, right? And here was a thing that needed mending. If whoever wanted the job done wanted it done _prettily_ they could have arranged for me to start with better resources.

"Anyway, by long ways and short, two and a half years later that original problem, well, it's much improved. Not _completely_ fixed yet, mind, but at the point where it's healing naturally, and I'm working to make sure That Arsehole can't undo my hard work. He's responsible for the problem in the first place, however much I damn Dumbledore for his contributions. That aside, we're here, and _you just got the same message_."

"You think it's a message too? I thought so." She gives me a squeeze. "We should consider what it means. I have an idea, I want to hear your thoughts. A cross-check, if you like."

_Might as well_, I think. Aloud, "Needles are for making and mending. What are you supposed to make or mend? Could it be the same thing I'm working on, making sure what I fix stays fixed? Is that the significance of getting the needle specifically from she who spins?" I'm aware I've been babbling a bit, falling back on old habits of admitting nothing and talking in generalities. I focus more on occlusion, needing the clarity. It's damned hard with a brain that's this many years from maturity: there's a reason nobody decent teaches more than the foundational exercises of occlumency to pre-adolescents.

Belle gives me a squeeze. "That matches what I thought. I was hoping you could help. That we could help each other. And I know _some_ of what you did. While you're out doing whatever 'walking the Grim' is a euphemism for, there are still memories in your physical brain. Everything you've done while in the flesh, it's all in there. Everything since you drew your first breath and made that dreadful joke to the Flamels. All those memories, all the things you've said and done. I got glimpses of them while I was practising the body-swap on you, just flashes. Sorry, but I got curious."

It just _did not occur_ to me that the normal biological processes were still going on in my brain. It totally should have: I've noticed the difference in my thinking when I'm in body and when I'm out. Everything I've seen and done has been recorded in physical memories. And I've not been home to defend them. _Shit_. At least this time I'm fully occluded, _deep_ occluded, so I'm not going to panic. This could be bad. I can hear Tom's laughter, distantly, outside the walls around my mind.

Belle goes on. "It's how I know what sort of man you are. That, and Harry vouches for you, no flies on _that_ little wizard. Did you know he's got the makings of being a legilimens? No matter. The important part is that it's how I knew I could come to you with this. The old families, we still remember the root of the word divination. _Divine_. They, the powers, they send omens, often in the form of dreams. They are omens we ignore at our peril, that we _cannot_ ignore and still claim to be witches and wizards. That needle was _important, _I _felt it_. The tears and cuts you've made, that you're going to make, those particular Daughters of Night want them sewn up, after. I'm in, Mal. All the way in."

_Well, shit_. "And here I thought you were going to ask me to marry you again."

"You said a year and a day. I wasn't all the way asleep for that bit. I liked what you said. Considerate and sensible."

I'm coming to realise that she really does mean it, and, what's more, I'm not knee-jerk opposed to the idea. Not entirely sold either: I've married a smart, pretty woman before, and look how _that _turned out. "Well, don't think it's a deadline. If it takes you longer to get your head on straight, you should take that time. It's not like we can do anything about it before we're legally teenagers again. Sixteen, if we do it in Scotland, would be the earliest." Sixteen in England, too, but the legal work required to give someone the legal authority to grant us parental permission in the proper form would be tiresome.

There's more, though. Something I hadn't pointed out to her. Didn't realise it myself until too late: I underestimated her intelligence Because Pretty. I was hoping she wouldn't take the last logical step, it not being entirely obvious, but what she just told me? It changes _everything_.

I wrap an arm around her, squeeze a little, "And, well, you realise you know everything you need to, to be nearly as immortal as me now, right? What you've done once, you can do again. A bit of learning, some study on the muggle side of things, you'll be able to make _improvements._ You've got _time_. _We've _got time."

"Oh."

This time it's _her_ who can't control her goosebumps.

-oOo-

**Three And Three Quarter Years Later**

Harry James Potter, of Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, was proud to say he was a perfectly normal wizard, thank you very much.

It wasn't _hard_ to say that, compared to the company he kept. Mal, who was occasionally a grown up, always finding a way to be silly, and insisted that as he was rich he wasn't weird but 'eccentric'. Belle, who used to be under a curse that made her be a terrorist and was now a little girl again, also occasionally a grown up (and _really_ pretty) and mad for music of all kinds. His cousin Dudley, who was close to getting his maths, physics, and chemistry GCSEs at _eleven_ and was going to be getting special tutors at Smeltings. His honorary uncles Remus and Sirius, who were a werewolf spymaster - which was perhaps not _that _weird but definitely _cool_ \- and a high society wizard playboy - ditto - respectively.

The Tonkses were nice and sensible, even if Dora was occasionally A Bit Much. Especially when she and Belle got together.

Harry had no idea about the rest of the wizarding world. Except the Lovegoods, who visited occasionally. They were nice but deeply odd in a rather fun sort of way and had amazing stories of hunting for strange creatures on tropical islands.

Other than them, the only contact he'd had was that one time a squeaky-voiced man in a purple top hat asked him to autograph a book about his mum, and one mad whirlwind of a day shopping in Diagon Alley the day before his eleventh birthday. They'd all got new wands and trunks full of school supplies.

And another half-dozen people, all but one of them witches, had asked him to sign the book about his mum that he _really_ ought to get around to reading.

None of this really told him what it was _like_.

That was all about to change. They were climbing the stairs up from King's Cross Underground Station: today was the day that Harry and Mal and Belle were going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

END

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES

Plasterboard is one of those universal products that has a different name everywhere. Sheetrock, drywall, gypsum board. Mal wanted the non-itchy insulation, but it's not on the market yet. I left out the resultant swearing.

JKR's version of Lupin's patronus is that it's a wolf and he doesn't like wolves so he only ever casts the mist version. I do not like this, and have substituted my own. Whatever else Lupin might be, he's not a complete idiot: he'd not hamper his defence against creatures as dangerous as Dementors if he could at all help it.

And yes, it turns out that while Mal has educated himself to passing competence in the magics he's been using, there's still a great deal to learn. Tom didn't enslave Bellatrix for her looks.

The final bit in the ritual is cribbed from roman law: there were categories of property, termed '_res mancipi',_ that had to be conveyed from one owner to another in ritual form - using an ingot of bronze and a set of scales - rather than an arithmantically significant bag of coin - as a symbolic price and ritual words that translate more or less as they are spoken by Belle. Mal scripted it that way for the historical resonance and because he thought it was funny: he still hasn't told Belle that she's technically a slave and therefore res mancipi herself.

Adhara: Bellatrix wanted an astronomical reference in the name of her 'daughter'. The star Adhara is 'the virgin', symbolising her new beginning, and in the constellation of Canis Major, just as she moved into the house of the Big Black Dog.

Abney Park Cemetery was open from 1840 to 1974 as Europe's first wholly nondenominational garden cemetery, and continues as a public park. It was a convenient location for the Blacks, with no muggle religion and they liked the neo-Egyptian aesthetic.

What Mal said wasn't actually hearsay evidence, by the way. He's just giving Moody an excuse not to record it, what with it being the _absence_ of a confession, which would have been admissible hearsay if made: her suicide note absolutely is admissible hearsay. If you want to know more about the Law of Evidence, look it up on your own time.

It doesn't come up in-story, but the idea that the tapestry at 12 Grimmauld is automagically updated with births and deaths isn't in the books (it might be in the movies and certainly is in fanon). As it's described in OotP, Nymphadora Tonks doesn't appear on it at all, only a burn-mark where Andromeda was. So the Belle/Bellatrix deception won't be caught that way.

(Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks Nymphadora is a lovely name for a girl and that maybe she could lighten up about it a little?)

And yes, this is where I'm ending this instalment. I'm going to actually _plan_ the follow-ups - which I probably should have done in the first place. Would have, if I hadn't started writing this on purest whim. (I could probably edit this into better structure, but I only work that hard when getting paid.)

There are, of course, things that are going to happen between that final moment with Belle and Harry's arrival at King's Cross. You'll get them as and when they come up in the story, or as you work out what must have happened to make Harry's first year at Hogwarts look like it's going to.

Do Mal and Belle get together? Are they still together that far in the future? What does Belle contribute to the Raising Of Harry Potter? (And Daisy, for that matter?) Did she get that snake tattoo? Is Dumbledore going to ask Nicolas Flamel for a Stone to store at Hogwarts? What is the Black/Malfoy feud all about? What houses do they all get sorted into? How many horcruxes do they manage to take down before getting to Hogwarts? What's Mal's plan for the Riddlewraith?

Some of these, and probably a scene with singing elephants that I can't quite get out of my head, will feature in the next instalment of this story. Or possibly the one after that, not sure yet. I'm not doing Stations of The Canon, that's for sure.

Finally, Belle's dream is the final clue as to what the Fates were trying to prevent (and there are good in-universe reasons for them intervening, never mind the metatextual ones) by sending Mal. I'll put the answer in the author notes for the first chapter of the sequel for those of you who don't guess it in the meantime.

The next fic from me, however, is going to be unrelated, because I've got a file of notes, several finished chapters and an actual _plan._ It's an improvement on a fanfic idea I've read a couple of times that needs, shall we say, jazzing up a little. Despite appearances, it will actually NOT be a Harry Potter x Terminator Franchise crossover. While that's posting on the current chapter-every-fortnight schedule, I'll be planning part 2 of this story. There may be some delay as some paid writing work is going to have to be done over the next year, an old contract came back to life.


End file.
